BookMooch is a dream.

Have you heard of BookMooch?

I just found out about it yesterday and already I'm hooked. Basically, it's like a chain letter but with a way better story and you don't get a hand cramp from copying out the note 10 times. AND you don't have to worry about breaking your mother's back or falling down a flight of stairs or having alien children or never kissing a guy if you don't pass it on. 

Okay, so maybe it's like swapping books with your friends, only your friends have practically every book you want to read. Oh, and they live in London and Indonesia and Niagara Falls so you have to mail the book to them. 

Since yesterday, I have sent out 9 books I have already read and didn't want to keep. And I have 25 points! In one day! I think this is very good (I'm very competitive). So I can mooch 25 books from other people FOR FREE. Except, I haven't had time to mooch any books yet because I've been so busy sending out books to moochers of my books. But it's okay. BECAUSE I HAVE 25 FREE BOOKS WAITING FOR ME TO MOOCH! 

Of course, then I will have to read these books.

So far I've mooched Town House by Tish Cohen...

And the giver has sent me an email to tell me it's en route. 

Which officially makes it quicker than buying used books from amazon.ca, which is where I used to post all the books I wanted to resell after reading. I do love amazon.ca, but I find that many of my books expire before people buy them and it's a pain to relist. Also, I never end up buying many books, since unless the seller is in Canada I find it takes several weeks to arrive and because I did not get in the lineup for patience at birth and since I walk by Indigo nightly on my way home from work, I  usually end up buying the book before it arrives, so then when it does I have two copies of the book, which really is just ridiculous (although if you leave one at home and one in your handbag you are never without your book, though you'll often find you can't remember what page you're actually on). 

So while I'm not sure BookMooch is going to be quicker and solve that "I-must-have-this-book-right-now" problem, it's FREE. Most of the time, the used books I buy on amazon.ca end up costing about $10-12 (cost of book plus shipping). But when you mooch on BookMooch you pay NOTHING. Not even shipping. 

You are, of course, spending money to send books to other moochers. But, some girl on BookMooch emailed me today out of the blue to explain that if you send books to people who don't live in Canada you get 3 points rather than just 1, and you can tell international moochers you'll only send the book if they mooch 3 at a time, because it will likely cost the same amount to send it but you end up getting 9 points instead of 3 which means you get 9 FREE books instead of 3 FREE books and why wouldn't the moocher pick 2 more because it doesn't COST ANYTHING to do so! 

Which is why I now have 28.4 points (I know! Five seconds ago I had 25 points and while writing this post, I just got 3.4 more points! I just looked to see how this happened, and apparently you can get Smooches from moochers who like you and I just got 4 smooches! How can anyone not love this website? It makes you feel happy!). Now I just have to mooch 28.4 books. And then find time to read them. When I'm not at the post office.