Addicted to Paperbackswap

I've mentioned Paperbackswap before -- I'm still going strong with it -- at this point, I've mailed out 111 books and have received 87 -- I don't know how those numbers compare with other users -- I've been doing this for several months but there are folks who've been at it longer and probably have much higher numbers. I got an e-mail from PBS the other day, though, asking me to please continue to swap the books I've received. This isn't a hard and fast rule -- you can keep them or re-swap them -- but they'd like you to keep those books in the system. Some of them I do but some I want to keep -- not to mention I'm not going through books very fast nowadays so most of them are still on my TBR pile.

One of the things I always do is check out the sender's other books when I've requested one -- it saves money to send books to one address so, if they have one I want, I go ahead and request it from the same person. It's funny how there are often books I already have on those lists -- but it makes sense -- if I'm requesting one they have, it stands to reason they may like the same sort of books I do.

I also found out something else recently -- teen and young adult books go like wildfire. My daughter cleaned off her bookshelves after I asked her to go through them and see if she had any she'd be willing to let go -- she had a ton of them -- and I've put them all on PBS. In the last week, over 50 books have been requested -- most of those were on someone's "wishlist" -- but even those which aren't are being steadily requested.

Right now, I'm sitting on 44 credits (some of the credits of the mailed books haven't come through yet). I tend to not request books left and right -- I'm usually disappointed when I read something out of my usual genre (historical fiction -- and even within that genre, I'm pretty specific) so I really don't request/buy books which aren't to my usual liking -- unless the reviews have been phenomenal and, even then, I'm often not thrilled. What can I say -- contemporary novels just aren't my thing. Anyway, my PBS wishlist is a mile long so I'm hording my credits for those, too -- one series I've been collecting is the Brother Cadfael novels (in hardcover) and those have been popping up with regularity -- I think I have about half of them now.

By the way, I have a link to Paperbackswap over on the right hand side of this blog. I'm not sure if I did it correctly but, if you use that link to sign up (at the present time, PBS is free), I think I may get extra credits -- so that would be appreciated. If I didn't do it correctly, then it's just a link...