BookCrossing is a terrific online service that allows people to share their books, in a unique way, with strangers.
I’ll admit that I’ve often been reluctant to part with books. Although I love buying books for others, I have always balked at giving my own away.
I think I inherited this reluctance from my grandfather who had to leave school in grade 4 after his father died, and he had to work to support his mother and two sisters. Nevertheless, by the time I knew him he was a renaissance man in the breadth and width of his knowledge, all of which came from books, books that he struggled to buy, books that he kept all his life.
BookCrossing, however, might have made him reconsider his need to hold tightly to every book in his collection; it certainly has done that for me. Have you heard about BookCrossing? It’s a terrific service, an ‘abandoned book finds new owner’ club.
Here’s how it works. When you sign up as a member on the BookCrossing website, you can register a book that you want to give away. Your book gets a BookCrossing identification, which you write on the inside cover. This identifies your book to anyone who may find it as one that was intentionally left behind. You leave your unwrapped book at a local coffee shop, or somewhere that it’s likely to be found.
If the person finding the book registers his or her find on the BookCrossing site, you can track its journey. Some books have taken journeys that most freelancers can only dream of; they see the world as they are passed from reader to reader.
