to the boy with the blue haired girlfriend.

like much of america, i spent my president’s day honoring our founding fathers with my credit card. george washington is totally going to love my new pencil skirt (H&M was having a BOGO on all sale items). but my purchases, shockingly, are not the central focus of this post.

while at the forever21 (i know i’m probably too old to shop there, but i fundamentally don’t give a shit and they had a lot of really cute work blouses for under $20), i saw this young girl cruise by- boyfriend in tow. this is a pretty unremarkable thing at the mall, since it’s pretty much wall to wall teenagers (enough to give me a massive panic attack at the delia’s). but in the vast field of skinny jeans and ankle boots, messy ponytails and graphic Ts, this girl was a standout. bright blue hair in braids, and this enormous home made bow perched on top of her head that looked like she ripped it off a samantha doll circa 1992.

and there was her adorable boyfriend. trailing behind, happily bobbing through the cacophony of racks, fluorescent lighting, and pushy high schoolers.

and i looked at that ill advised bow. and i looked at that boy. and i realized that i needed to send a thank you note to every boy that i ever dated from age 14 to about 25.

librarything hates me, but i refuse to stop trying to hump on those free books.

nowadays, there’s social networking sites for literally everything (stachepassions probably being my personal favorite), so it stands to reason that there would be a number of sites dedicated to bookworm types. and there are- MANY. most notably, you’ve got your shelfari and your goodreads… and bringing up the rear, is portland’s very own librarything (who knew it was right here!). it’s a lot less pretty, and significantly clunkier than the other two to use, but what it lacks in glossy sheen, it makes up in mad crazy functionality. above and beyond a basic digital bookshelf, librarything essentially lets you search/categorize/sort down to the cellular level. basically, if you get a boner for the dewey decimal system (or enjoy engaging in some hardcore self-righteous literary snark), this shit is FOR YOU.

so, why the hell am i telling you about this?  librarything is not merely a rad place to go to bump chests about books with other bibliophiles… but they also have monthly free book giveaways in the form of a pretty awesome program they run called “early reviewers“. basically, authors and publishing houses send fat crates of their new books to librarything, and members can sign up for a chance to get them for free (under the condition that they read and review them for the site). dude, FREE BOOKS. you love free books! i love free books! and it’s not all crappy self-published bullshit-  they get some seriously TOP SHELF SHIT.

the main caveat here being that i haven’t been chosen to get one yet… but it’s free to play the book lottery, and i have high hopes that someday i will win.  perhaps a sexy complimentary blog post will finally tip the scales in my favor (ahem) (hint hint) (p.s. i’m really pulling for “the girl who would speak for the dead“)? but seriously, even if librarything never asks me to the prom, it really is an utterly fantastic website (you should go join my nancy drew discussion group right now),  and somebody is getting all those awesome free books- why not you?

if you could only read one book for the rest of your life- what would it be?