Hitting the Books

Romancing the Blog put out this list of sites to help you name your characters, or just explore if, like me, you like names in general.

The Medieval Names Archive is especially well-documented, and a bit of an eye-opener. I had no clue that Fiona, Brianna, and Deirdre weren’t real medieval names (they’re all 19th century or later).

Romancing the Blog has put up another Top 10 List (I think all the usual contributors are still relaxing after the holidays), this time on Book-Shopping and Book-Swapping. The usual suspects are there–Amazon. Barnes and Noble, Book Clubs.

But there were a few new (to me) sites. The one that really caught my eye was BookCrossing. In their own words:

The “3 Rs” of BookCrossing… Read a good book (you already know how to do that) Register it here (along with your journal comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, “forget” it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records journal entries for that book. And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it!

It’s a world-wide program, and sounds like loads of fun. I’m thinking I might try it with some of the books I have hanging around the house.