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Journal entry 1 by kreid from Sapcote, Leicestershire UK on Sunday, March 12, 2006
Found among my late husbands effects it was the last thing he read ..:(
Ciouldnt bear to open it myself so releasing it for others to enjoy .:)
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Journal entry 2 by saraG73 from Earlsdon, Coventry UK on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
FOUND at Coventry bus station! My first catch, whoo-hoo!
Will release back into wild as soon as ive read it
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Journal entry 3 by saraG73 from Earlsdon, Coventry UK on Thursday, March 16, 2006
This is the worst book I have ever opened
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Journal entry 4 by KENfromCOV from Coventry, UK on Monday, March 27, 2006
FOUND:
on Coventry municipal rubbish dump
Hiya this is my first time i'm a binman,
looked like this had just been thrown out with household trash,
but then I saw your sticker on the cover so i came herec
to find out what it was all about,
i don't read much myself so i put it in a charity shop
hope that's all right?
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Journal entry 5 by BUK-LUVA101 from Coleshill, Birmingham UK on Friday, March 31, 2006
FOUND:
Norwood St. Oxfam Shop, Coventry
haha, beat you all, anyone who was looking for this!
reading now
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Journal entry 6 by BUK-LUVA101 from Coleshill, Birmingham UK on Monday, April 03, 2006
This book was so bad it has killed all my joy in life
everything is spoiled forever
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Journal entry 7 by SimonLan99 from Edgbaston, Birminghamh UK on Tuesday, April 04, 2006
FOUND:
In jacket of body of suicide victim, Birmingham Mortuary
Er... bit of an unconventional catch, I know, but...
shame to waste a book?
If the bloke was a book-x-er he would have wanted it like this
I'll be disinfecting it obviously
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Journal entry 8 by SimonLan99 from Edgbaston, Birmingham on Thursday, April 06, 2006
Jesus
who knew?
cannot, cannot gauge the depths until you lean over
All those years ago, that teacher who taught me to read
never knew what she was doing, I pray she never finds out what she did to me
don't don't for the love of god
sorry im so sorry
I CAN NEVER BE CLEAN AGAIN
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Journal entry 9 by DoktaProkta from Alcester, Warwickshire on Saturday, April 22, 2006
FOUND
Happy Lawns Mental Institute
- in a fireplace! One of our long-term cases was trying to burn it!
Timely catch, eh? it's all ok rescued it in time
Will read myself when I get a chance & then release
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Journal entry 10 by DoktaProkta from Alcester, Warwickshire on Tuesday, May 16, 2006
(Sorry to still be hanging on to this,
been too busy to read the past three weeks -
all our loonies have been acting up ever since I found it
howling and wetting themselves all the time, pointing at me and screaming when I come into a room
must be something in the air...
I'm going on holiday next week, promise to read it then,
anyway it'll be a better release, chance for it to seek pastures new)
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Journal entry 11 by DoktaProkta from Alcester, Warwickshire on Wednesday, May 24, 2006ae
let it end with me
release hahaha sweet release
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Journal entry 12 by JimD1sf from San Francisco, CA USA on Friday, May 26, 2006
Hey,
Not sure how this works, but I'm a police diver in SF, some guy jumped off the GG bridge &
I had to retrieve the body, long story short I found him at the bottom of the bay,
he'd chained himself to this heavy lead box.
Here's the kicker - we open the box and this book is inside!
So this is my first time on this but I don't think anyone's going to top that for a catch!
I guess now I read the book & release it?
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Journal entry 13 by JimD1sf from San Francisco, CA USA on Monday, May 29, 2006
I read the first three chapters
I don't want to talk about it
I think I'll release it at the airport
I want that thing far away from me
Maybe then I can forget
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Journal entry 14 by DarrelVachsl from Seattle WN, USA on Thursday, June 01, 2006
Found! San Francisco airportk
This is such a neat idea
OK I'm a long-haul pilot so keep your eyes on this sucker, it
could be going anywhere next!
I get my co-pilot to read to me on long flights, when we're done
with this, that's where I'll leave it
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Journal entry 15 by Carlo Alveloza from Santiago, Chile on Sunday, June 04, 2006
This i find in wreckage of plane she fly into mountain. Is sad.
we investigate still but it seem pilot fly deliberate into mountain
We find many corpse and this book, she survive, is miracle!
I give to sisters in convent for to sell for the orphans
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Journal entry 16 by SisterAnnaLucia from Santiago, Chile on Tuesday, June 06, 2006
NO HAY DIOS
NO HAY DIOS
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Journal entry 17 by Lt.RogerCarstairsRN from HMS Intrepid, Indian Ocean on Wednesday, January 24 2007
FOUND:
In a brothel in Shanghai.
Where to begin? Can I bear to talk about it now? Do I even want to try?
It was late last October that I found her, the terrible Lady of the Book. My ship had been taking part in an official visit to Shanghai. After three days of diplomatic banquets, and politely nodding and grinning my way through carefully orchestrated tours showcasing the city's modernity and prosperity, I started to chafe at the bit. One night I slipped my moorings and went looking for trouble. I found it, all right.
Shanghai can still be a bad old city, if you know where to look. I don't remember how many seedy back-street dives I visited that night, my eager cicerone for the last few being a rascally old Malay with a hook for a hand who had attached himself to me at the first scent of money. At length I was tired, jaded and sobered and decided to call it a night. But, my new friend insisted, there was one more landmark of Old Shanghai the illustrious gentleman had not yet seen, and to whom it would only be polite to pay my respects. This was Shanghai Annie, the Queen of the Night, who in a few short months had become a legend among the fallen and the damned for the depths of depravity to which she would sink. He gleefully recounted some of the more colourful and shocking tales of her exploits, among the most piquant of which was the rumour that she had once been a nun. My curiosity got the better of me.
The Malay conducted me to a tiny run-down house at the end of an unlit alley in the oldest part of town. How can I hope to describe the denizens of Shanghai Annie's parlour? The foulest chaff and riff-raff of the seven seas were congregated there, cut-throats and pirates and unregenerate cannibals, and a seasoning of poor souls whose cadaverous blotches or absence of nose or fingers gave unmistakable warning of the ravages of leprosy. A foul and slatternly crone held court among them, puffing on a bamboo opium-pipe and laughing mirthlessly at their infamous sallies. At first glance I took her for close to 60, but soon, with a start of horror, I saw that, despite the marks of degradation harrowed into her face, she was not much older than I, and that her features might once have been noble.
I am afraid she saw my revulsion and it amused her. She came over to me and languished against me horribly.
'Pretty Englishman,' she said, stroking my head. Her features were European and her accent seemed hispanic. 'I repulse you, do I not?' She cackled. 'Once, and that not long ago, you would have been glad to look at me, Englishman, for I was young and beautiful - but I would not have looked back at you, for I served only God. This is how a woman looks who has whored her way across the Pacific Ocean seeking nothing but annihilation.'
I mumbled something polite and she laughed again.
'Why did you come here, Englishman? Seeking brave boys' stories to tell your chums? But there are stories and stories, senor. Come, I will show you one.'
I was pulled protesting into a filthy back room containing a squalid mattress and what looked to be a little shrine with a candle burning before it. To my surprise, however, it venerated not a picture but a scuffed and battered book - not a bible, I perceived, for I could make out the title FALSE IMPRESSION by JEFFREY ARCHER.
'Behold,' she said, 'The Book.' She knelt before it and lit another candle.
'Is it, um, a good book?' I asked.
'It is the final book. This, senor, is the book that revealed to me the utter nothingness of the universe and the fathomless banality of the human soul.' She rose and crossed to the door and to my alarm locked it and swallowed the key, licking her nigh-toothless gums obscenely as it passed her lips. 'And now, pretty curly-headed young English gentleman, I think you will do some things to please me if you wish to leave this room with your carefree life intact.'
'I'm damned if I will!' I said.
'You are damned if you do not, for if you do not I will read to you from The Book.' Something about the way she said it made me quail inside but I made no reply. 'Very well then.' She seized it from the shrine and in a sepulchral voice started to read at random:
'Anna slipped on a white t-shirt and blue running shorts. Although the sun had not yet risen, she didn't need to open the bedroom curtains of her little room to know that it was going to be another clear, sunny day. She zipped up her tracksuit top, which still displayed a faded P where the bold blue letter had been un-stitched. Anna didn't want to advertise the fact that she had once been a member of the University of Pennsylvania track team. After all, that was nine years ago. Anna finally pulled on her Nike training shoes and tied the laces very tight. Nothing annoyed her more than having to stop in the middle of her morning run to re-tie her laces.'
'No!' I cried, clapping my hands to my ears. 'No, please, stop!'
'Anna double-locked the front door of her four-room apartment, walked across the corridor, and pressed the elevator button. While she waited for the little cubicle to travel grudgingly up to the tenth floor, she began a series of stretching exercises that would be completed before the elevator returned to the ground floor. Anna stepped out into the lobby and smiled at her favourite doorman, who quickly opened the front door so that she didn't have to stop in her tracks. "Morning, Sam," Anna said, as she jogged out of Thornton House onto East Fifty-fourth Street and headed toward Central Park.'
'That's enough!'
'I assure you I have barely begun.' She flipped a couple of pages and resumed.
'When Andrews touched the banister to steady himself, Arabella knew her sister was dead. Arabella had often wondered how she would react in a crisis. She was relieved to find that, although she was violently sick when she first saw her sister's body, she didn't faint. However, it was a close thing. After a second glance, she grabbed the bedpost to help steady herself before turning away. Blood had spurted everywhere, congealing on the carpet, the walls, the writing desk and even the ceiling. With a Herculean effort, Arabella let go of the bedpost and staggered towards the phone on the bedside table. She collapsed onto the bed, picked up the receiver and dialled 999. When the phone was answered with the words, 'Emergency, which service?' she replied, 'Police.' '
'Please...I beg you...'
'Her eyes settled on the letter addressed ‘My dearest Arabella’. She grabbed the unfinished missive, unwilling to share her sister’s last thoughts with the local constabulary. Arabella stuffed the epistle into her pocket and walked unsteadily out of the room.'
'Don't go on! I will do as you ask.'
I prefer to pass over the next hours in silence. It was dawn before I managed to escape from that loathsome room. Every time my strength waned she would goad me to further exertions by quoting snippets from The Book, terrible words that rang endlessly in my ears and haunt me to this day. At last I left her sated and snoring and broke free.
Upon reaching the safety of my ship I collapsed in a fever, and spent the next six weeks in sick bay hovering between life and death. The ship's doctor diagnosed some disease of the body, but it was a malaise of the spirit that had gripped me.
I was never sure why I had stolen the book when I fled, whether to prevent her using its dark powers on some other stray innocent, or out of some obscure impulse of pity for her, or purely for my own sake. Many times after my recovery I meditated destroying it, but seeing the sticker on the front cover and investigating this site I discovered how many attempts at destruction the accursed thing has already survived.
But now I think I have found the way to be rid of it forever. At midnight tonight we are to launch cruise missiles laden with high explosives, targeted on enemy positions deep in the hinterlands of Afghanistan many hundreds of miles away. I have secreted the book in the nose-cone of the first of them. With luck, this will be the last time anyone ever hears of it.
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Journal entry 18 byeWarlordIsmail from Zerkoh, Afghanistan on Friday, March 09, 2007
This is Very Bad Book. The fight is gone from me. I surrender. Send no more.
Have you no shame, dogs, that you make war like this? Since I read this book my crops fail, my sheep wither, my wives are infertile and my sons walk like women. Damn you Jeffrey Aracher! A thousand curses on the devils of book-crossing! I give this book 1 out of 10 at most.
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Journal entry 19 by Ruud from Den Haag, Holland on Tuesday, Aprill17, 2007
FOUND: At the International War Crimes Tribunallat the Hague
Now I go to euthanasia clinic
No, too far, I jump out window
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Journal entry 20 byy AliceBookWrm from London UK on Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Found this lying in the street while visiting Holland & brought it back to share with my reading group.
They bear me no grudge, and it is not as a punishment that I have been appointed the one to kick the chairs away once all twelve of them are snugly in their nooses. For myself, a can of petrol and a match will serve to release me from
>Transfer Interrupted!
DO NOT COPY
May 7th 2007