Thanks for starting this Lottie.

I'm Abigail. I'm 25 and I live in Oxfordshire. Like Lottie, I belong to BookCrossing and GoodReads. I have a profile on LibraryThing, but don't use it anymore. I also have a blog which details all my book-related activities. Other than reading (and ocassional writing for pleasure) my hobbies are music related- singing, playing guitar, play the tenor horn and listening to music.

My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Ursula Le Guin and Christian Jacques. I'll read practically anything apart from chick lit and horror (although most of the books on my to keep shelves are in the sci-fi/fantasy genre).

I don't have any plans to release books for Born Free Books yet, but I have a huge collection of TBR books which will probably be left for others to find when I've finished reading them. I'm looking forward to seeing more books on this site so that I can start to search for books using the map.

I have an apple too, and I do like a bit of 80s music! I love Annie Lennox, must get more Eurhythmics stuff on Spotify. It's good to get to know a bit more about you, Andrew! :)

My music tastes are actually further back in time than you guys. Whilst I like 80s music, my passion is 70s music and I like stuff from the 60s as well. My favourite band is Queen.

I love Queen too! I guess like anyone I have favourite songs from every era. :)

It's gotta be a good thing, it must mean you are open to a lot of varied music. :)

Andrew, is there a way of changing our avatars here in the forums?

Okay, I'll give it a go. Thanks! :)

It's worked on the original post, but not the comments! I've tried refreshing and suchlike, no joy. Any ideas?

(I'm properly sleepy today, so I might seem a bit fed up! Sorry in advance. :/)

Oh! That's interesting: http://skitch.com/lottielodge/dg7es/support-at-born-free-books-intr...

I can confirm that there's a picture of Lottie on all the posts now

I've just popped a piccie in myself, but I'm guessing the same thing is happening because I can't see it on the posts yet

Correction- its on that last one, but not on the ones before

Thanks

Roger that, confirming everything you and Abigail said, Andrew. :) Also, I like the way the light moves through the water at the very bottom of the page - you have a great eye for detail.

Cool, the more the merrier. Rohan is a fab name!

Hello Hello! What a lovely way to start the week - all these compliments!

I'm Rohan ('Ro' will do just fine thank-you-very-much), the chap who works alongside Andrew at The Hatchery, usually drawing pictures and what-not! I'm 28, a tech geek, and I live in London. I love traveling and photography, which seems like it's the norm these days.

I truly enjoy most genres of books, although I'm more partial to sci-fi/fantasy and good spy/crime thrillers. My fondest memories of the magic of reading as a kid came from Brian Jacques and David Eddings. More recently I've enjoyed Shantaram, We need to talk about Kevin, and The Lies of Locke Lamora. I've also started down the path of collecting all of the Asterix books - mainly for their art, which I love.

Reading is really an escapism thing for me I guess. I hope this reflects in the design of the site.

I'm really enjoying watching BFB grow - what a lovely project to be a part of with you all.

My next release will be Devil May Cry (average bond book by S Faulks) followed by Box 18 by Spike Milligan.

Hello Ro. You deserve the compliments, the design at the bottom the site is truly inspirational. And it definatly reflects the idea of reading as escapism

I agree with Abigail, sometimes I really feel like I could be sitting on my sofa, which is part of the "set" of whatever I'm reading. :D The whole site is really beautiful. Thanks for joining in, Ro!

Hello, Lottie pointed me in the direction of the site and the forums so I thought I'd  say Hi!

I'm Shell I'm 30 and live just outside Swansea, I'm originally from Norwich.  My favourite hobbies are knitting, spinning (wool not bikes ;-) ), reading, sewing and many more.  I also have a inner wanna-be geek so spend a lot of time online and playing with my new HTC Desire phone.

We have a few books here that will be released into the wild when I get time and think of good places to leave them!

Yay, welcome Shell! We are few, but awesome. ;)

On a vaguely spinning-related note, my friend Hannah has been dyeing some wool lately and it is stunning. She's @citrusgirrl on Twitter, let's badger her to post photos!

PS: Andrew! Michelle's avatar showed up when I was logged out, and then disappeared once I had logged in, another strange one. :)

Hello from Miami, Carlissa here.  I found this site from a post at Goodreads.  I am also a member of Bookcrossing and most of my books are registered there, but I did find a book that wasn't registered, so I registered it here and released it.  I love your labels and bookmarks!  (Thank you for sending them to me!).

I read mostly mysteries, sci fi, memoirs, and books about animals.  I listen to a lot of audio books and read ebooks on my iPod.  Some of my favorite authors are Orson Scott Card, Douglas Preston, and Alexander McCall Smith.

I used to run a book trading site called The Cheshire Kat Trading Post; unfortunately it is now defunct. 

Hey Carlissa! :)

Welcome, and I hope you get some catches on your books. I'm trying to set up a giving-books-away thread, for people who definitely want to get catches! (It's not the same though, I know.)

Thanks for the news, Andrew - now I know to not compulsively check the site every couple of hours... ;)

Lottie

Thanks for the nice welcome!

Andrew, I'm glad you like my site's name; my daughter is the one who came up with the name.  It was originally done in ASP, then I converted it to PHP.  The site did well for a couple of years, but then several other book trading sites started up and most of my members went elsewhere.  I started the site as a project for a college course in web design and I didn't have the money to maintain it.  I still have all the files.  Would you like to run a book/dvd trading site?

Hey Lottie!  I saw your giving away thread and think it's a great idea!  I don't do much trading anymore as I have more books than I have time to read!  I do have an audio bookbox making the rounds at Bookcrossing though since I like listening to audios while driving or doing housework, and the bookbox is a good way to exchange them.

I was wondering, though, how many members ya'll have in the US? I hope I'm not the only one across the pond!

Andrew, you're the best! :) I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

Carlissa, I've been very into audiobooks lately. I found that knitting while watching episodes of things and movies was doable but actually really tiring on my eyes - but audiobooks are just perfect! I know a lot of people wish they could knit and read at the same time, and audiobooks make it possible. :D I'd love for there to be bits and bobs on this site that make it possible to trade books - maybe something somehow that matches up two people who each have a book the other wants? That would be so wonderful. :) I'm sorry to hear your trading site didn't work out, I think the more the better. ;)

Hello, Lottie, Abigail, and Carlissa.   I'm on BookCrossing and noticed Lottie's positive threads about this site on their forums.  Thought I would try it and am quite impressed with the registration process.  Congratulations, Messrs. Mobbs and Walsh!

I'm an old-fashioned school librarian in southern  Virginia, USA  who loves reading about  travel, nature, economics and other nonfiction.  Modern literary titles are often much too shocking for me!  For example, I just finished *Mason & Dixon* by Thomas Pynchon and, while he's a brilliant writer, I found the convent scenes quite disgusting.

Music:  I love so many different types; from Vivaldi to Wyclef Jean to AC/DC.

I'm  an enthusiastic fan of the Kindle and will eventually do most of my reading electronically (adjustable font size = great for senior citizens like me!).  The only paper books I expect to acquire in the future are  lavishly illustrated; the coffee table or young children's variety.  Who knows, though, maybe Amazon is working on a color Kindle?

Welcome. Its lovely to see another new person making their way across to the boards.

Hi Meg! Sorry for the delay, I've been really disorganised with my online stuff lately, arg, etc. But I wanted to pop by and say welcome, and I hope you're enjoying the site! Have you left any books out in the big wide world yet? :) I've only managed two, but I'm working on it. ;)

I hear you, re: the Kindle. I don't have a Kindle, specifically, but I do have an ebook reader; it's an Elonex, apparently. It does the job, I mostly use it to read books that are really heavy in their traditional form, I just love the smell of paper. But I can see that one day there will be loads of ebooks and less traditional books, and the traditional books we *do* have will be really individual and interesting in some way. A cricket player, for example, will soon be publishing some editions of his memoirs with his actual blood mooodged into the pages! Freaky, eh?

My point being, the future, we're getting there. And, welcome. :D

For the curious, here's the article about the cricketer and his irreplacable traditionally published book: http://gu.com/p/2tekp He's Sachin Tendulkar. Strange, but verrry interesting and handy for voodoo purposes! ;)

Howdy y'all :)

Like Carlissa and Meg, I'm also in the US. In the Lone Star State (but in a blue city). Before moving here I've lived in Ireland for a while, before that in a bunch of other places. But trying to stay here for now...

I like Macs too, and obviously books and reading and so on. I like photography (but am such a lens and optical zoom whore that I keep my 8 mp + 30 x optical zoom camera as my main one for a while as I don' want to spend as much as I'd want o spend). I and my hubby are owned by two black kitties, one of which has been blind since he was born - but that doesn't slow him down. 

I like gardening odd plants, but I don't have a back yard. My N/NE facing balcony has a lemon tree (1 1/2 feet high so not too big yet), a bunch of tinier orange and lemon trees from seed, an avocado tree, two bananas, coffee plants, hot peppers, herbs, tiny tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, and some random plants given by a neighbor who moved to some other state. And a bunch of pineapples. Hmm - what else? Cooking experiments, swimming, occasional crafts (crochet, knit or stitches), that's about it.

Lottiotta, my ex bf has CF too. 

Hi Giax, welcome! Everyone seems to know someone with CFS, it's a bit scary really. There's obviously a lot of people suffering from it in some way! I just wish they knew where it comes from. *le sigh*

Yesterday I went to a wedding in London, and today my bones are all melty, but it was totally worth the effort. :D

Oh yes, to bring the subject back to books, (!) I did manage to get some reading done on the train! I'm on "A Game of Thrones" by George RR Martin, talk about doorstop. :D I'm enjoying it, even though it's totally unrealistic or something.

Hey everyone

I'm Jane, 24, living in Oxford and just discovered this site via GoodReads which I'm also a member of. I'll be liberating my first book tonight-exciting really!

I love reading, going to the cinema, seeing friends, socialising...the usual really!

Hope you're all having a good Tuesday

J

Oh, and I'm the one on the left of the picture :0)

Hey Jane! Welcome, and I hope your first release went well! :)

Andrew, that's exciting news about the impending update. Eeeeee!

I've been keeping one eye on BFB, but mostly I've been trying to read through my epic backlog of books, the large portion of which are already registered on BookCrossing. I made this spreadsheet to find out how long it'll take me to read my whole backlog, and it currently says about 5.5 years! Onoes!

For the curious, here is the spreadsheet... ;) https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AqHjtty4nWjhdFVwTzVxWWRGeX...

Hey Lottie and Andrew

I liberated my first book! I enjoyed leaving it somewhere and hoping someone would find it and enjoy it too-especially hope it was found quickly as it's been a bit rainy lately. Felt quite furtive sneaking up and leaving it-didn't want anyone to see me....was fun! I might see if any have been set free around here, would be awesome to find one!

Hope you're having a good week guys :-)

Hi Jane, welcome to BFB and congrats on your first release. I too love the excitement of trying to leave a book without someone spotting you. Maybe we'll find some of each others books, I'm not too far away from Oxford ;)

Hey

Yes had a good week thanks as my boyfriend is back from Chicago so very happy. I'll try to do some more book liberation soon though, I hope someone sympathetic found it. Going past there tonight so I'll check to see if it's gone or not. Maybe we will find each other's books Abigail!

Know it's Monday but still-did you all have a good weekend? x

:) My weekend has been alright, really. I was meant to go to some meetings in Manchester but wasn't feeling up to it (I have CFS), so got stuck at home. In the end my friend came to stay, we had a fab time, and yesterday I did some hardcore babysitting for the newest member of my "chosen" family; he's just 3 weeks old, or thereabouts. So it's been busier and more exhausting than I was expecting, and I'm glad of the rest today!

On the book-related side, I've had some furniture delivered today. For the first time in a year I have a proper wardrobe! :D Anyway, so I had to move my bookcase, which required me to unload it. As I was reloading it in its new position, I had a bit of a book sort-out, and now I have around 10 books that need new homes! I am going to list some of them here on BFB to see if anyone wants some free books in the post... ;)

Andrew, let us know if there is an ETA for the new version, because I'm hanging on for it! I'd like to have some books to register here to test it out. :)

Hey guys! 

Just found this website a couple days ago and thought Id let you know what a brilliant idea I think it is! I'm going to sort through all my books and see which look appropriate to be set free. :)

Hey April!

Hope you're having a great festive season. Thanks for your kind comment - It means a lot to us. Good luck with the book sorting!

Ro

Hi April, welcome! :)

Hey Guys! 

Thanks for such a warm welcome! I've earmarked a couple of books I want to share already. :) 

And no worries about the order, I'm in no rush. :) 

Hope everyone had a wonderful new years and that you continue to have a lovely year. :)