About a month ago, I stumbled upon this Web site, The Great American Book Giveaway.

The basic premise is each week they pick five random (but often) popular/best-selling books. You choose which one you’d most like to receive, type in your e-mail address, and if you’re chosen, they send you the book.

They send an e-mail when you submit your entry each week and then, if you don’t win, a reminder at the end of the week to check out the new crop and enter this week.

So, this has been going on for several weeks. I figured there was no harm in entering. I love reading, and I spend entirely too much money on books. (One day I will take a photo of just the two dozen or so books in my backlog. And yes, I am aware that it’s cheaper to go to the library. Thank you to the dozen co-workers and friends who’ve told me that. One of these days, I’ll get around to signing up with the Tippecanoe County Library or West Lafayette Library. But for now, I kind of like being able to see my personal stacks and reading a good book that I can then pass along to someone else who might enjoy it.)

So, the idea that I might actually win one of these books seemed impossible, or at least highly improbable. I’ve only ever won one thing over the Internet. Incidentally, it was a book also, and it was for correctly identifying the author of some quote on a quote-a-day listserv I subscribed to. But that was way back in high school. Therefore, when I got an e-mail tonight from the site, I figured it was the weekly “you didn’t win, but enter this week’s contest.” Instead, it said, Congratulations! You’ve been randomly selected to win …

Apparently the book I chose last week when I entered was “How Do You Work This Life Thing?” by Lizzie Post. Sounds like it could be interesting, though I’d never heard of it before the contest. I think that’s part of the point, to expose you to good books you might never hear about. If you want to see a list of the books they’ve featured in the past, they keep an archive with links to book/author information.

We’ll see if the book actually arrives. And when it does, it’ll go in the stack — right next to the books I bought at Border’s tonight. Yeah. I know. I need to stop going to Border’s/Barnes & Noble/Used Bookstores/Amazon.com. I can’t read the books as fast as I buy them. Some people buy shoes. I buy books. (OK, I have a lot of shoes, too. But a lot more books.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Fun, Offline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.