Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

A Living Library event looks much like a conventional library - tables and chairs are set out for study, librarians staff the check out desk and borrowers can browse a catalog of books.  The difference is that what's on loan are not books but people!  The heart of The Living Library are Living Books - people that, for one reason or another, are subjected to stereotyping and prejudices. All are unpaid volunteers.

The concept is simple; interested participants check out a Living Book on a topic of interest and spend 30 minutes in discussion with the particular Book. 

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Kim Kovacs, BookBrowse reviewer

I have to admit I've become something of a Christmas Grinch. I don't have children, and my two cats have always shunned any gift I've purchased for them (apparently preferring toys of their own devising, like twist ties and the plastic rings off milk jugs). I'm also at that stage in my life where I have everything I need, as do my friends, so we end up exchanging gift cards: No fuss, no muss, no long lines at the store, but also not very festive. Over the years it's become too much of a chore to dig out the ornaments and set up a tree, so "decorating for Christmas" has come to mean that I've changed the wallpaper on my Blackberry to something holiday-appropriate.

I used to shop carefully for my nieces and nephew, choosing toys that I thought were both educational and fun (and, preferably, noisy, to drive my sister crazy). I'd also pick out a book for each of them, hoping that at least one would develop a love of reading (so far, no luck). I'd wrap each gift with great care and pack them into boxes, then trek over to the post office to stand in line for hours to spend a relatively large sum to get the presents across country in a timely manner. Then one Christmas my sister decided to videotape the kids unwrapping the gifts I'd so lovingly sent them. It's hard to imagine four children looking more bored and unimpressed then this quartet. "Say thank-you to Aunt Kim!" I heard my sister chirp in the background. "Thanks, Aunt Kim..." the four replied in an unconvincing monotone. It's been cash ever since.

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Kim Kovacs, BookBrowse reviewer

I'm a hard-as-nails network administrator for a large company, and as such I strive to present a certain image - logical, unemotional, impersonal (yes, Star Trek's Mr. Spock is my hero). Much of my reading reflects this about me. I love high-tech science fiction novels like Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and William Gibson's Neuromancer. I'm also a fan of well-written (and well-reasoned) mysteries and thrillers, finding myself easily immersed in their order and logic. I can often be seen at lunch perusing a technical manual just for the fun of it (really).

And yet...

I've unexpectedly found buried deep inside myself a - gasp! - ROMANTIC! Yikes! What would my techie co-workers think if they only knew?

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

By the time election day arrived, my election-habit had reach chronic proportions.  In the normal course of events I'm happy to catch up on the news daily at most, and find that the world gets along perfectly well without me following its every movement, but by November 4th this year I was an addict.  Not content with picking up the news every day or so, I'd moved to hourly, even minute by minute checks - keeping screens open to key sites and refreshing them feverishly every few minutes, just in case something, anything, had happened.

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

What's with Google and beta tests? A beta-test is supposed to be a short lived stage in between a product going live and it being declared sound enough to be offered to the general public. But four years after launch, with tens of millions of users, Gmail is still in beta (as are any number of other Google products). Surely, by now the bugs must be ironed out sufficiently so that Gmail can stand tall without having to hide behind the apologetic 'beta' tag?

Then again, perhaps Google's on to something. If their products can be in perpetual beta-test, maybe the rest of us can be too? Imagine, no more berating yourself for the silly mistakes you make. Instead, having made a mistake, fix it or learn from it, and congratulate yourself for ironing out one more bug in the great beta-test called life. After all, if a life in beta is good enough for Google, maybe it should be good enough for the rest of us?

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Our household is one of many pets - the dog, the hamster, a dozen or so fish, and an indeterminate number of worms.

The worms moved up the familial totem pole from organic waste disposal unit & free mulch-makers to family pets a couple of years back when husband refused to give up a handful for fishing purposes, claiming that worms were friends not food. With his close affection for our invertebrate friends it was a sad day last week when we lifted the lid of the worm bin to deposit a bowl of potato peelings, to find that the worms were no more - the delicate balance of moisture needed to keep them in health and happiness (wet enough to keep them slithering but not so wet that they drown) had gone awry and the whole bunch had shuffled off their mortal coils.

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