Today our Featured Member of the Month is: T. who was our Member of the Month- September 2008

1. How long have you been a PBS member?

I’ve been a member since January of 2007. I jumped in feet first and never looked back. Trading books was just a part of the draw of PBS–the value of the friends I’ve made in the forums can never be measured and I am positive some will be lifelong friends.

2. How did you find PBS? How has PBS impacted your life. What does PBS mean to you?

A local woman posted about PBS on Craigslist. My interest was piqued, but I wasn’t sure if it was another crock of a site or a real gem. I found my answer pretty quickly. I ended up ordering from the original woman and we met in person. The book was a Nora Robert’s novel, and I didn’t care for it–but hey, I got free books just for signing up! When I became hooked, I seriously was hooked. I scoured thrift stores and garage sales looking for great deals on WL books to pass on to make credits. At the time it cost about $1.50 to send out a paperback, so it was really cost effective to buy books for a quarter and mail out. My to trade shelf was huge! Then, sometime down the line, my TBR became huge and my bookshelf kept getting smaller. I have so many books now (1000+) that I only get WL books now. This has changed my life. I’ve been the type of person who would read the cereal box if nothing was available. Now there is always something available!

3. Did you read as a child? What was your favorite book growing up? What book impacted you most as a child or young adult?

I was a reader for as long as I can remember. My parents and 5 siblings were not readers and still are not readers. My parents acquired a used set of encyclopedias when I was a grade schooler, including the Childcraft books that went along with them. I read every single volume of those encyclopedias. In 5th grade, during the class Christmas party, our teacher, Mrs. Springfield, gave every student a book. I was somewhat upset that all the other kids got these goofy funny books and I got a big honking paperback–Heidi. No pictures, just pages and pages of text. I ended up loving it and never shied away from a novel because of its size again.

Heidi wasn’t one of my favorites, though. As a child I have to say Black Beauty by Anna Sewell made the greatest impact on me. I grew up around horses here in Texas and couldn’t fathom how they were treated in the book. It was heartbreaking.

4. What is your favorite or most meaningful book read as an adult?

I’ve read quite a bit, both things I have chosen and things assigned when I was an undergraduate working on my BA in English. To ask me to pick one meaningful book that shaped my life is an impossible task for me. I think every book leaves a little bit of itself with the reader. Before I was a college student I would say Stephen King’s The Stand, a wonderful study of the struggle of individuals to align themselves with either good or evil. After graduation, I would have to say books that a real, gritty, and get at the reality of the human condition are my favorites. An example of this would be Toni Morrison’s Beloved. You can feel the emotion as the main character decides that it would be better to smash her infants head against the wall than let the slave handlers have their way with him. It is horrifying, but it is bare truth.

I have to throw in a line or two for Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. It is more than a movie with Brad Pitt. Read the novel. This guy has a philosophy that amazes me with every reading. That’s what I love…the Wisdom of Chuck.

5. What are you reading now?

I’m reading several things at the moment. Fluff is The Hunger Games Trilogy. Nonfiction is Breakthrough!: How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World. And literature is When the Dead Dream by MariJo Moore.

PBS would not be what it is today without the people. We can pick up books anywhere. We can’t find friends like these anywhere.

If you have any nominations for Member of the Month, submit them to us here.  Your nomination will not “expire”–anyone you nominate will have a chance at getting Member of the Month if enough nominations accumulate over time. Each month the person who has the most votes accumulated when the Newsletter goes to press gets to be Member of the Month and gets a newsletter mention and a nifty MoM icon to wear on profile and forum posts with pride.  So go for it! Tell us who’s helped you in the Forums, who’s been a great swapper, who in your opinion is a credit to PBS.  We are keeping a list of all the nominated members.  Who knows–one of them might be YOU!

Today our Featured Member of the Month is: Cathy W. (Firefly). Cathy was named Member of the Month in May, 2010.

I have been a member of PBS since January of 2006. I don’t remember how I found out about PBS. That is one of life’s great mysteries, I guess. PBS has introduced me to so many new authors and new people. And after a recent major financial life change, PBS means that I can still get books to read that my library does not have!

I read all the time as a child. I don’t remember ever not having a book or more around. My parents read to me before I could read myself. They also kept reading to me after I started to read – books that were above my reading level, but that I would still enjoy. I have fond memories of my dad reading “Paddington Bear“.

My current top book is “An Instance of the Fingerpost” by Iain Pears. I don’t have much knowledge of the church or state of England in the 1600s, but that did not detract from my enjoyment of this book. I enjoy a good mystery. Pears did a wonderful job of portraying each ‘author’ in a different voice, and gave you a glimpse of who they were. Each version of the tale built upon the last and brought to light how easy it is to think you know something, when really, you missed the boat, so to speak. It is one of a very few books that I intend to re-read!

Right now, I am reading “The Little Prince” by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. I originally read this in high school, in French. I am enjoying it again, this time in English. I do wonder though…does this count as rereading it? 🙂

If you have any nominations for Member of the Month, submit them to us here.  Your nomination will not “expire”–anyone you nominate will have a chance at getting Member of the Month if enough nominations accumulate over time. Each month the person who has the most votes accumulated when the Newsletter goes to press gets to be Member of the Month and gets a newsletter mention and a nifty MoM icon to wear on profile and forum posts with pride.  So go for it! Tell us who’s helped you in the Forums, who’s been a great swapper, who in your opinion is a credit to PBS.  We are keeping a list of all the nominated members.  Who knows–one of them might be YOU!

Today our Featured Member of the Month is: Jade K. (Jade4142).  Jade was named Member of the Month in October, 2010.

In 1959, my brother Randy went to school, and I envied him! There, to that brick building strode my brother, to gather and, I knew even then, discard vast amounts of knowledge while I sat home having sugar water tea parties with my dolls! I was green!

He announced at dinner some few weeks later that he was learning to read. I seethed. He scorned his baby sister and his younger brother, for we were not learning to read.

Said younger brother, Brad, moseyed off to find out how fast a tissue would burn, when stuck into the gas flame of our mother’s stove.

I said to Randy, quietly, “Then teach me.”

He eyed his baby sister speculatively. He felt quite indignant that there were uneducated people in his house and it was that small boy’s way to simply fix what was broken.

“It’s hard,” he told me solemnly. “It’s a lot of work to learn to read. And you have to do it the right way, in order.”

I simply nodded. It was far too important to me, to argue or even take the chance that he might not teach me.

I wanted to learn to read. I saw my parents read. I saw my older brothers read. There were things in books that made them smile and sometimes made my mother cry, and sometimes, when it was in the newspapers, it made my mother and father argue. I wanted to know what it was.

Randy took the challenge. At the lofty age of 5, a boy who actually attended school for half a day, he undertook to share some magic skill with me that would make the gibberish in the newspaper and in books, make sense.

I learned to read when I was 3, and I remember even now that moment when the gibberish on the page became words. The world became in that moment, and I became. I became a child who could read. And I found the magic in books, and I laughed, and I cried, and sometimes I discussed what I’d read with others, who argued with me.

My mother’s mother, who had long been a school teacher, heard the news with joy! And she began a lifetime of buying me books. She sent them to me, brought them to me, and had them sent to me. She told me about a place that simply overwhelmed my young mind; the library!

I was a child with a world of treasures. Then I was a teenager with a library that was the envy of every friend who enjoyed reading.

And then I was an adult. And my mother passed on and left me her home. While I emptied it of those things that I did not wish to keep of hers, I put most of my things in storage and got my own house ready to sell.

In May of 2007, my brother Brad, who had never developed any interest in reading, went with me to my storage space to start moving me into Mom’s house. I opened the storage room door and smelled what every book lover instantly recognizes as the stink of mildewing books.

Half an hour later, I, a small woman with a visceral scorn for violence, said to my brother, “If you say that one more time, I promise you, I will beat you to death with that sofa.”

What he had been saying for half an hour was, “They’re just books. Calm down.”

I was not calm, and I would not become calm. Every book but the last Gram had bought for me, two months before she died in 2000, had been in that storage space. Every movie, every audio book, and every printed book I owned but for that one book, was destroyed by a leaking storage space. I was unhinged. I was enraged. I was sunk in black grief. I flung moldy boxes toward the front of the storage space, saying words that only my brothers have ever heard me say. I tore soggy boxes open and dug through stinking black books, hoping that just one had survived the water.

None did.

In 2008, having just purchased a replacement book on a site, I went to their wanted posts and discovered one that said, “If you want free books, go right now to PaperBackSwap.com. You can get free books there.”

I was intrigued. I knew what I was spending on books. I went to the site and registered. I read in the Help Center and clicked on things to see what would happen. When I felt pretty comfortable with the site, I listed some books and requested some books. That was in March of 2008.

Now, in March of 2011, there are no books on my wish list, and my Excel document, created in 2007, titled, Books To Be Replaced, is blank. More than 700 of the books I lost in 2007 were replaced right here on PBS. Gram had bought me hardcovers, and they’d all had dust jackets. Many had been first editions. I replaced them with hardcovers that had dust jackets and were first editions. Right here on PBS.

But the fact that all my books have been replaced doesn’t mean I’m done with PBS. A dear PBS member sent me a link to a site that lists authors of murder mysteries, one of my passions, and their main characters, plots and books published. I am once again a woman on a mission! And PBS will see me through that one, too. I’m choosing one book written by each new author (new to me, anyway) and I will read that single book by each author. If I love what I read, I’ll order the rest, and of course, some will go on my wish list.

The love affair of the century began in March of 2008. PBS and me!

If you have any nominations for Member of the Month, submit them to us here.  Your nomination will not “expire”–anyone you nominate will have a chance at getting Member of the Month if enough nominations accumulate over time. Each month the person who has the most votes accumulated when the Newsletter goes to press gets to be Member of the Month and gets a newsletter mention and a nifty MoM icon to wear on profile and forum posts with pride.  So go for it! Tell us who’s helped you in the Forums, who’s been a great swapper, who in your opinion is a credit to PBS.  We are keeping a list of all the nominated members.  Who knows–one of them might be YOU!

Today our featured Member of the Month is Greg (VOSTROMO). Greg was named our Member of the Month in January, 2011.

Hello, minions. — I’m sorry, that was rude. I meant to say “prior minions.”

I’ve been asked, as your former higher-up and current lower-than, to say a few words about my experience as a PBS Member of the Month. I can assure you it was no picnic — no siree, I had to pay for my own food throughout the entire month. I did lose seven pounds, so there’s that. But even a cupcake would have been nice. Just saying.

Anyway, I was thrilled to discover I’d been nominated, never mind chosen, as a MoM, because I never really thought the whole mass-hypnosis thing was viable. But that turned out to be the best 1-hour class I’ve ever taken. And the cookies at the Y are pretty good, if you get there early.

As it happens, I found out about my election not through the PBS newsletter, which I read every… never or so… but from the personal messages and 500-thread-count CMT posts, which were extra-special because they matched my overpriced bedsheets so nicely.

When I joined PBS back in the pre-Kindle days — imagine, there are people being born now who will never know the thrill of dropping a book from a great height, like a tree branch which just happens to be extremely close to my ex-girlfriend’s bathroom windowsill, and having it not break! — I was a mere piker who, having lived in New York City and spent many a bedusted afternoon sidling through the Strand Bookstore, had only — get this — six hundred unread books on his shelf! I know!! Now, after almost 4 years of near-constant Wish List finessing, I’ve lost count, because my eyesight isn’t what it was and I really have been trying to catch up on all the laundry.

There are a few standard questions which Team PBS has suggested as starting points, so let’s take them just so:

1. How long have you been a PBS member?

I joined PBS in January of 2007, not that it’s really any of your business. I can’t say the day stands out in my memory as particularly noteworthy for any other reason, which is to say it’s unique, since most of my days are unstoppable festivals of unceasing amazement and wonder. Or maybe that’s Clooney, I’m not sure. Yeah it probably is. Oh I remember — I was drinking my morning Folger’s and checking out Lolcatz when I got an email from the President of Namibia telling me I’d won US$4,500,000 in the Pan-African Lottery. Again, kudos to the Y for those awesome classes! I was making out the transfer-fee check when I saw something about PBS on some or other website for People Who Are Cheap And Unashamed, and thank goodness I noticed it because I almost sent out that check! I mean without a stamp or anything! Yeesh!

2. How has PBS impacted your life. What does PBS mean to you?

PBS has impacted my life in some positive and negative ways, to be frank. I’ve certainly enjoyed virtually-meeting the faithful in the Forums, and trying to get them to learn to spell – there are limits, after all, to what hypnosis can accomplish even with the internet – and getting a book in the mail fairly bristles with pleasurable anticipations and frissons of, er, frissonation, I guess. And certainly I’ve saved a lot of money over retail prices. But to be fair, there are downsides: my butt falls asleep now much more than it did before, because I can’t reach the keyboard without sitting down; worse and ironical, I think I’m actually reading less because I can never decide what to start next, so I just go back to the Forums and wait to fall asleep. I know a lot of people post “tell me what to read next” threads and such, but I’m not sure I want to relinquish control to anyone who lives near a Y, if you take my meaning.

As for what PBS “means to me”, I think it stands for “PaperBack Swap” – yes?

3. Did you read as a child? What was your favorite book growing up? What book impacted you most as a child or young adult?

I did read as a child, though I found I enjoyed books much more if I read them using my skills as an adult. Sounding out words phonetically gets tiring, and seems unnecessary for the letters in Penthouse.

The first book I remember reading on my own is a book I wish I could remember more: some YA novel about a kid racing cars with his dad – that’s all I remember, except for a vague, indescribable but definite mental picture of the cover – and I’d give anything to find out what it was and re-read it now! Except my Pan-African Lottery money, and anyway I’m still waiting for that.

If I had to pick a favorite book read while “growing up” (a meaningless concept if ever I heard one!) I’d probably say Harriet the Spy. But the short stories The Problem of Cell 13 and The Lady or The Tiger? made as big an impression on me as anything ever since, at least after my sub to Penthouse ran out.

4. What is your favorite or most meaningful book read as an adult?

You mean, other than Penthouse? Well, as I’ve noted a few times in various CMT threads I’m very hesitant to single out specific items as absolute favorites or most meaningfuls because I think the cumulative effect of time has a huge impact on what and how much one appreciates any type of artistic work – you are a different reader every year! I also find there is a gap between what one may consider best and favorite – certainly, to switch media for a moment, Citizen Cane is among the best and most meaningful films ever made, but it can’t hold a candle to Kung-Fu Panda in rewatchability. I can say with confidence that Moby Dick, Song of Solomon, and Ninety-two in the Shade are among the novels I consider to bridge the gap quite well; I’ll never forget The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy but I don’t know if I want to re-read it all that often. I loved Catch-22 and Something Happened and Rabbit, Run and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The City and the Stars and of course I could go on and on and on, like I always do anyway.

Certainly the works of Alexander Pope made a tremendous impression on me, and I have striven ever since to give up any hope of achieving real wisdom.

Lastly, I will single out Studs Terkel’s Working as having had a particularly strong impact on me, because it affected my sense of place in the world profoundly, reading it as I did at the start of my musings about such things, which never end.

5. What are you reading now?

I’m ¼ of the way through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and while I’m enjoying it, I had no idea how old-fashioned in scope and style it was. I haven’t read such a detailed work since How to Hypnotize Everyone in Your Neighborhood, and even that was only six pages long with illustrations. Actually the contract with the Namibian Lottery Council was pretty complicated, but of course who reads contracts, am I right?

6. What would you like the PBS members to know about you?

My middle name is the single initial X. Or that’s my dad’s name on my birth certificate, I always get those two confused. Damn.

If you have any nominations for Member of the Month, submit them to us here.  Your nomination will not “expire”–anyone you nominate will have a chance at getting Member of the Month if enough nominations accumulate over time. Each month the person who has the most votes accumulated when the Newsletter goes to press gets to be Member of the Month and gets a newsletter mention and a nifty MoM icon to wear on profile and forum posts with pride.  So go for it! Tell us who’s helped you in the Forums, who’s been a great swapper, who in your opinion is a credit to PBS.  We are keeping a list of all the nominated members.  Who knows–one of them might be YOU!

Today our Featured Member of the Month is:  Mendy
Mendy was named MoM for April 2009

1. How long have you been a PBS member?

Almost 6 years now… my join date was 6/16/2005

2. How did you find PBS? How has PBS impacted your life. What does PBS mean to you?

I found PBS through a good friend. PBS has brought friends into my life. I can’t thank the PBS community enough for everything they’ve done with me…. my Avon Walks for Breast Cancer, the swaps, the crafts, the illnesses.

3. Did you read as a child? What was your favorite book growing up? What book impacted you most as a child or young adult?

I devoured books as a child. Growing up I loved all books! The books that impacted me the most were those written by Judy Blume. She seemed to know so much about what I was going through as a tween/young adult.

4. What is your favorite or most meaningful book read as an adult?

I’ve read so many of them that have moved me or meant something to me. The most recent meaningful book is the best I can do right now. LOL The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. I was happy, sad, and angry through this entire book. I love it when a book makes me feel things and this one made me feel so many things. It’s one book that I don’t regret reading.

5. What are you reading now?

I’m back into a cozy mystery phase. I’m on chapter 3 of Buzz Off (Queen Bee bk 1) by Hannah Reed. I love that it’s set in my home state of Wisconsin – I even know a few beekeepers so it’s a fun read.

If you have any nominations for Member of the Month, submit them to us here.  Your nomination will not “expire”–anyone you nominate will have a chance at getting Member of the Month if enough nominations accumulate over time. Each month the person who has the most votes accumulated when the Newsletter goes to press gets to be Member of the Month and gets a newsletter mention and a nifty MoM icon to wear on profile and forum posts with pride.  So go for it! Tell us who’s helped you in the Forums, who’s been a great swapper, who in your opinion is a credit to PBS.  We are keeping a list of all the nominated members.  Who knows–one of them might be YOU