Bookins — or, what to do with your spare books.

I don’t know about other people, but I have stacks upon stacks upon stacks of books in my tiny college room. In fact, I’d say that at least 50% of my possessions are books.

It’s a failing, I do think I literally cannot walk into a bookstore without buying at least 2, if not an entire armful of books. Amazon.com doesn’t help in the slightest either. With their “customers who bought this also bought xxx” and “recommendations”, I can easily rack up more than 100 dollars in less time than it takes to say Jack Robinson. My save for later cache is 232 items deep at this point, sure to swell to 300 soon.

But the thing is — not all books are good books.

Even after carefully reading all 56 reviews of a book to decide if I would like a book, it’s entirely likely to come up with a dud. *reflectively* Of course, it’s also possible that ratings have been boosted by reviews from friends and co. of the author, something which I hear is quite the thing to do.

At any rate, it’s a problem when you have valuable bookshelf real estate that is being taken up by books that you do not care to have lying around or even to be in possession of AND the buyers on Amazon.com are not offering enough to even cover shipping expenses.

Which brings me to Bookins.

This is a site where you can list your books for trade, browse for books, and get books for only 3.99 each.

How it works is that you get free postage that you can print out when someone wants a book that you have, which you in turn recieve Bookins points for. Then you can go out and spend those points on books that other people own and only pay for shipping, at 3.99 a pop.

I really like this system, except it seems that they rarely have books that I like. Also, depending on how in demand your books are, your books could still be sitting there gathering dust.

I’d recommend doing this if your books are next to worthless on amazon.com and abebooks and etc and you have room for a couple boxes of books in your home. I’m not sure, but I think that it used to be that people could “buy” points, but I don’t see that on the site anymore, so I could’ve just been hallucinating. *grin*

Still, great way to reuse books and get more. Always a good thing, in my book.

P.S: if you’re tech savvy, then you can have a permanently displayed widget on your site, I still must needs figure out how to use it though.

P.P.S: I found out how to use it, but I want the spiffy colourful one, not the gray thing I currently have! Might need to learn how to play with code now.

Wherein lies the path to madness

Many food bloggers talk, nay, perhaps the phrase is “fondly complain” of their addiction to cookbooks, much like elderly grandmothers like to go on about their real and imagined infirmities.

No offense to food bloggers and grandmothers everywhere, mind.

I find myself suffering the same problem, except mine is slightly worse, you see.

( ah, here comes the one-upmanship that is so much a part of the ritual)

I don’t follow recipes.

In my pride, hubris, arrogance, I always assume that no one except for myself ever really knows what I want.

Therefore, I add two cups of coco powder when the recipe calls for 4 Tbsp, 6 eggs instead of 4, and the whole recipe goes to seed. Then I pick myself up, try to cajole Chris to eat the fatalities and throw myself unto the breech once more.

But anyways, I had a  craving to bake bread yesterday night, and so here is a recipe that isn’t one for fear that I will never make it again just this way — which I won’t anyways, but there you are.

Honey whole-wheat bread

3/2 cups warm water

1 cup honey

1 Tbsp yeast (probably too much, but there wasn’t a yeasty flavor, so I guess it’s alright)

4 cups whole wheat flour

1/4 cup melted butter

4/3 cups white flour

Mix the warm water with the honey and the yeast.

Toss in a handful of flour to see if it froths, then continue.

Stir in the rest of the flour until it starts to vaguely look dough-like. It was about 4 cups in when I couldn’t stir it any longer and had to start using my hands.

Knead in the rest of the flour, then knead until it’s smooth and no longer sticks to your hands.

Slather with butter and then leave to let rise, then toss in a 300 degree oven for about an hour, or until it’s golden brown on top.

Once I made really really fluffy, airy bread. I don’t know what I did right that time, because since then and before then, I’ve always had heavy, dense peasant style bread. Perhaps it’s the flour, maybe it’s the honey, but if anyone has any ideas, do share.