On my large TBR pile.

I just realised I have custody of the only tame copy of this book - the other is in the wild in London. And it's currently shown as not available on Amazon.com! I got it in Heathrow Airport in April - it must be only available in the UK currently.

As Do Not Pass Go is so rare out here I'd like to start a bookring which hopefully will run until at least Amazon start selling it in the US. The first round of the bookring is for North American readers (as I originally limited it so noone on the early list was expecting to ship internationally). I'll then either find some kind soul to mail it internationally or send out another copy when it reaches the end of the US/Canada leg.

Current participants in order:

1. Fly46 (US - OH)
2. Zrmzlina (US - MA)
3. NKwriter (Canada - ON) - skipped
4. Scramble (US - IL) - skipped
5. Betsy-STL (US - MO)
6. tootshelling (US - AZ) - skipped
7. Hawkette (UK)
8. JonAzrael (UK) *
9. FutureCat (New Zealand) * <---------- current reader
10. Tuz (Brazil) *
11. back to me - Kernow8 (UK)

* = international shipping OK

The bookring order will be kept up-to-date here so when you're ready to send it on just contact the next person on the above list.

From the back:

Welcome to London

A city where a house is yours for £50, banks make errors in your favour and you can even park your car for free. As a Monopoly player Tim Moore would always cravenly pay that £10 fine rather than take a Chance, but in Do Not Pass Go he boldly tackles the board's real streets, telling the story of a game and the city that frames it.

Sampling the rags and the riches, Moore stays in a hotel in Mayfair and one on the Old Kent Road, enjoys quality time with Dr Crippen in Pentonville Prison and even winds up at the wrong end of the Water Works pipe. Along the way he solves all the mysteries you'll have pondered whilst languishing in jail and many others you certainly haven't: how Pall Mall got its name, which three addresses you won't find in your A-Z and why the sorry cul-de-sac that is Vine Street has a special place in the heart of Britain's most successful monopoly champion.

Do Not Pass Go is a stirring travelogue of one man's erratic journey around those 28 streets, stations and utilities, and an epic and lovingly researched history of London's wayward progress in the 66 years since the launch of the world's most popular board game.

I've just finished reading, in time to send it out before I go on vacation! The book contains hundreds if not thousands of little-known and often fascinating facts about London (and quite a bit about the game of Monopoly too), and is written in a fairly light/humorous style so it doesn't get weighed down too much by all the information. Having said that, it's not a quick read and in the middle of the book I felt as though I was plodding through it - maybe that was because I was desperate to finish it before I went away though!

The bookray has started! - Mailed to fly46....

Okay, guys.... Give me a few weeks to get this read.... Aside from the most obvious that it's a 340 page book, it came with at least one other book ring, and I have one to be mailed out and another one sitting at home..... NOt only that... I love Monopoly more than I love books (I actually collect the variations) and I'm very mad that I don't have the England edition yet.... plus this will enspire me to get out my new New York edition and actually play it (I haven't played since before I got it, so it's still unused)


Aug.1 - Okay, quick update... Started reading the book, love the dedication to Hasbro, so the rest of you make sure you read it... It's really slow the first chapter so I'm hoping it will speed up as I go along. I'll let y'all know more as I go along.

I finally finished it. I didn't realize I had it this long... Sorry for the delay.

It's an interesting book.. The author takes the monopoly board and goes around the city of London, talking about each different set of spaces and why they were there and how they changed from 1935 - when the game was first introduced to London - to 2001/2002 when he was writing the book.

It was pretty slow reading for a while... It was hard for me because of the British slang that he used (quite often) in the book, so I had to read things a few times for them to sink in or for me to understand what the dialect meant.

The ending, however, (the browns chapter, once his wife was in it), was totally worth it. The book was somewhere around a 6 or 7 before I got to that ending.

OOH, and don't forget the monopoly tips that are scattered a little here and there throughout the book... I actually won the first game I played after reading this, and I hardly ever win at monopoly...

Desirability of the properties, as per Britan's Monopoly Champion: (Note that the colors are as per the British edition also, which differ from the US edition)
Orange
Red
Yellow
Green
Dark Blue
Purple
Light Blue
Stations
Brown
(Utilities need not be on the board)


Oh, and only ver slightly related to the book... Do you know that when the first games came out in the 1930s, there was a special square you could buy to put on free parking that turned that square into a stockmarket?



Sending this on very soon.

Received in a box of books I am sending on for Fly46. Will contact next person and get this back on the road.

Picked this up at the post office and read the first couple pages of whilst sitting in traffic tonight. The first line mentions "pink ones" and bank, and the person counting the pink ones just returned from the "loo" so I knew it was Britain. and assumed it was British money since other countries tend toward more colorful bank notes than we do in the States. Wrong. It was only a few lines later that I discovered the truth behind the pink. And that's about all I got read before traffic starting moving (hope it wasn't a dead body they were putting in the ambulance as I passed). I've got high expectations for this book. The Times says "the new Bill Bryson," however, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the old Bill Bryson. Moore had better live up to that esteemed name or there's gonna be some mail flying off to The Times editorial department.

Thanks for sending this off to me. I'll get started on it right away.

Oh my goodness....I completely forgot about this book until just receiving a PM today. I think I put it down to get to later and later never came. I am heading back to Massachusetts for the holiday and will take it with me and mail it off to the next person in the ring from there. So sorry to have delayed this ring.

Rec'd on Friday (1-28-05). Will read soon.

I just can't get into this book right now so I'm going to forward it to the next person. (After I PM for her address) I'm sorry for the delay but I've been overwhelmed lately. My father died and then 5 days later my sister died.

Update: 3-28-05 I finally got a response from tootshelling, she asked to be skipped. So I'm now waiting for Hawkette's address.
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4-1-05 Book is on its way to Hawkette.

Has arrived with me in London. I had actually commented on my blog when I first arrived here, about travelling around feels like playing Monopoly - this book looks great!

A facinating and informative wander around parts of London. Lots of tidbits of info I would never had know. Funny in parts, although did drag at times.

I must admit I struggled to concentrate on the last chapter, the Browns, after putting on the news and discovering that bombs had gone off in central London that morning. A horrific and sad day for all, espesically those of us in London at the moment.

I haven't played Monopoly for such a long time, after my sisters and I had marathons of it, and had to call a truce and abandon it all before it got too ugly!! It is that sort of game!!

Will be sending on as soon as I can.

Arrived a couple of days ago and seems ineresting so far. Strange to think that I've been waiting for this to arrive for over 2 years now - I came close to buying it in various Waterstone's 3 for 2 sales, but never did. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.

Though I can understand how some may think this might drag a little, I found it very interesting throughout - quite a bit of interesting history, but Moore never lets it get too bogged down and seems to know exactly when to insert a little light humour to keep the flow moving.

It's been quite a long time since I played Monopoly, but I know the two sets I always went for were the Oranges and Browns. Good to know I was half right...

I'll send this on to FutureCat as soon as I get an address.

Arrived safely in New Zealand today. I'm in the middle of another (rather thick) book at the moment, but this one is next in line to be read.

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I want to go back to London!!! There's always something fun about reading a travel book about a place you already know - there's that smile of recognition when the author talks about a familiar place, and the "wow" of finding out something new about a street you always took for granted (which is a large part of why I want to go back - that thought of "if I knew *that* when I walked down that street every day I would have looked at it in a whole new light!"). Plus it brought back to me so strongly the feeling I had in my first few weeks in London (I lived there for about 3 years in the late '90s) of getting excited at seeing all those street names I recognised (especially the Monopoly ones) and everything looking like it belonged in a movie (probably because so many of the places I visited *had* featured in movies or TV series over the years). London seriously is a fascinating city (terrible to live in, of course, but fascinating all the same!).

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Tuz pulled out of the ring, and Kernow8 told me to not bother sending the book back to her, but to just pass it on as I saw fit, so I took it to our bookcrossing breakfast this morning, where it was pounced on by Lytteltonwitch.

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picked up at breakfast meet-up

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Clearing out my garage of all the bookcrossing books and they are being given to fellow bookcrossers.
I recommend this as a read and it would be interesting touring London as if it is a monopoly board.

The Christchurch bookcrossers meet up on a regular basis,the information is on BCNZ Yahoo NZ The main organizers are FutureCat and myself and we welcome new members to our very friendly group.

From a bag of books from lytteltonwitch.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Left on the sign, after finding a geocache.