Trailing the travelling novel

The thrill of finding a tattered copy of an elusive book for just Rs 20 at the local raddiwalla, the lure of a well-written plot that allows you to escape, albeit briefly, from the monotony of life… these are the things a true blue bibliophile looks for.

There is no urgency to line shelves with hundreds of well-maintained books, no desire to protect our precious collection from preying eyes. For we now have book clubs, where like-minded people share their experiences, commercial libraries that stock up on the latest bestsellers, shops where you can browse through books over a cup of coffee, and of course, street-smart vendors peddling books (pirated and otherwise). Of course, the price of a book is directly propotionate to the popularity of the author. And then there are the hallowed halls of the public libraries.

But an increasing number of people are finding innovative ways to spread the written word, for free. Russell Wattenberg from Baltimore, America, found a novel way to share the joy of reading. He started Book Thing, where people donate orphaned books, and in turn, these are given away free of charge. You can walk in, and pick up as many books as you want, the only condition being that they can never be sold. To ensure this, Wattenberg stamps all books with the message, “This is a free book. Not for resale.” Book Thing functions as a non-profit organisation. Those who wish to donate their books can deposit them in a drop-bin outside the door.

In America, Karen Miller chanced upon Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall lying in a conference room in Dallas. On flipping it open, she read the inscription, “Please read me. I’m not lost. I’m travelling around trying to make new friends.” Another reader in New York deliberately left his copy of Nick Hornby’s About a Boy at a Starbuck’s cafe in New York. It’s somewhere in Canada now, waiting to be read. These are instances of a certain bibliophile group at work — www.bookcrossing.com. This is an online website co-founded by Ron Hornbaker, in an attempt to create a worldwide community of readers. Hornbaker’s dream is to turn the world into a library, giving people the chance to share their books, following a ‘read and release’ policy.

All you have to do is register the book you wish to release and leave it in a public place. On registering, you will receive an ID number and a registration card, which can be pasted on the book. This way, recipients can log on to the site, ensuring that all the books are tracked. Finders CANNOT be keepers.

It was a pleasant surprise to find more than a hundred ‘bookcrossing’ members in Mumbai alone. And by the way, this writer will be releasing Larry McMurtry Duane’s Depressed this weekend.