Had you heard of this? It sounds cool.
Tucson, Arizona Tuesday, 20 August 2002
BOOKS LEFT FOR STRANGERS
Please release me
'Bookcrossers' making their mark on the world by leaving books for others to find, read, and maybe discuss on the Web site.
By Jennifer Jett
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
People in Tucson are committing random acts of literary kindness, leaving books in public places for strangers to find and then tracking the book's fate online.
Books have been "released" at places ranging from Reid Park Zoo to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, from the Student Union food court at the University of Arizona to the Pima Canyon trail.
Many of the books were picked up, registered on a Web site and later re-released for the next chance encounter. Along the way, something else is happening: People are reading books they probably wouldn't have chosen on their own.
What started more than a year ago in Kansas City, Mo., as a way to share books for free has grown into a virtual community of book releasers and finders who would love a world littered with free literature.
More than 22,000 people, who call themselves "bookcrossers," have been united by a love of reading, serendipity and sleuthing. Setting books free is being likened to a modern-day message in a bottle.
By word of mouth, the Web site BookCrossing.com - which doesn't charge a fee or accept advertising - has become the nation's fourth-most popular online reading site, according to the search firm Google. Since its inception, more than 50,000 books have been released - mostly in the United States, but also in England, South Africa, Russia, New Zealand and the Philippines, among other countries.
Melanie Carter-Carvalho of Tucson became a BookCrossing.com member after hearing about it on National Public Radio.
"It just sounded like a really neat idea," said Carter-Carvalho, 39. "There's something about just leaving a book for someone and wondering where it's going to end up eventually."
After she heard the report on NPR, "I went to my bookshelf and I looked at books that I thought somebody else might enjoy," Carter-Carvalho said. "I come from a family that reads tons and tons of books. I have a lot of books to read."
She has released three books, most recently "The Journals of Anais Nin," which she left in a shopping cart outside Trader Joe's at East Speedway and North Wilmot Road.
"Somebody came and got me," she said. " 'Oh, you forgot your book.' When they weren't looking, I put it back in the shopping cart."
Two days earlier, Carter-Carvalho had released "The Third Twin" by Ken Follett at Himmel Park on a bench by the playground. She also left "The Attorney" by Steve Martini in the Starbucks bathroom at Park Mall.
Though none of the books Carter-Carvalho released have been registered on the Web site, she occasionally checks to see if they've been found.
"At first, I was checking almost every day," she said, "and then it turned into a week and now it's every time I think about it."
Carter-Carvalho also uses the site for ideas on where to leave books in Tucson.
She enjoys mysteries, naming James Patterson, John Sandford and Mary Higgins Clark as her favorite authors.
"I try to really put a lot of thought into the types of books that I selected and where I put them," she said. "It's also kind of fun just trying to think of places to put them."
M.J. Rose, an author of three novels who covers online publishing for Wired.com and Salon.com and was called the "poster girl" of e-publishing by Time magazine, believes the concept of free books in public places is part of an effort to create communities.
"The idea that people are going to set these books free and give them a new chance to be discovered is amazing," Rose said from her home in Connecticut. "For the first time in our lives, there's a free movement. People are responding to that."
Jeff Yanc, head book buyer at Reader's Oasis, 3400 E. Speedway, said book sharing may be a way for readers to connect with each other "in a culture that doesn't really encourage people to connect."
Through the Internet, readers can create virtual book clubs, he said.
"I think people really like to talk about books, but I don't think a lot of people have other people to talk about books with on a face-to-face basis," Yanc said.
There also is a voyeuristic interest in chance encounters. A Web site called Where's George? lets visitors register and track the circulation of dollar bills at wheresgeorge.com. PhotoTag (phototag.org) publishes photos taken with disposable cameras that have been passed from stranger to stranger. Free Words (freewords.org) encourages people to slip a book of 13,000 stream-of-consciousness words into libraries and bookstores.
BookCrossing founder Ron Hornbaker, who lives and works in Kansas City, drew inspiration from these sites.
"I began to wonder what else people would like to track and thought about how people love to share books," said Hornbaker, a partner in a software company called Humankind Systems, which is footing the BookCrossing bill.
"I think people feel they're doing a bit of philanthropy, of sharing with the world. And it makes them feel sleuth-like. . . . Just imagine the whole world as a library."
The top book releaser, Harriet Klausner, who lives in Morrow, Ga., has released almost 2,000 books. She says her epitaph will read, "Give me literature or give me death."
Monica Bujak of Tucson joined BookCrossing.com in May after learning about it from a friend. She has released one book, "Travelers' Tales, American Southwest: Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah."
"I love books about the Southwest," said Bujak, 36. After reading the book, Bujak gave it to a friend traveling to Poland, who left it at the airport in Warsaw.
Bujak gave the book to her friend, she said, because "a lot of people in that area I'm sure have not had a chance to travel to the Arizona-Sonora desert. I'd like to share my part of the world with other people."
Though there have been no reports on the Web site of anyone finding her book, Bujak continues to check.
"It's a new experience for me," she said, "because most of the books that I buy, I buy because I want to keep them and savor them and go back to them."
For some people, the fun is in finding the right place to leave a dog-eared friend.
Diane Driver, who works at UC-Berkeley Resource Center on Aging, wanted her first book release to be memorable. During a visit to Pacific Grove, she found the perfect opportunity. Venturing out early one morning, she placed "The Wake of the Whale" on top of a whale sculpture in front of the natural history museum.
She returned a few hours later to find it gone. She is now hooked.
Oakland resident Chris Pankey, a former pilot who manages a personnel firm, chose a trip to Hawaii to release three books. A work on Amelia Earhart was left in the airport, a book on Charles Lindbergh remained on the plane and a book on baseball was left in the hotel.
"I think it's almost like finding a treasure," Carter-Carvalho said. "You go to the park and you see this book sitting there and it's like finding something and that's always pretty exciting.
"I'm actually getting ready to go on a trip, so I'm going to take a couple books with me to leave around."
- The San Francisco Chronicle contributed to this report. |
