BookCrossing

Several months ago after my husband and I moved to the small town of Lynden, WA with its Dutch heritage, and we soon requested a visit from the Welkom basket lady. Clothed in traditional Dutch garb, she came knocking at our door one Saturday morning with a basket full of goodies and coupons for a variety of free stuff and discounts on services.

Today we finally went around town and loaded up on a bunch of the free goods. Afterward, we headed home, then walked about a block to a nearby Greek restaurant. Now, I know this is terrible, but I'm not in the habit of washing my hands before I eat at a restaurant. My husband leads by example, though, so after he had headed off and returned again, I too made my voyage to the restroom thinking it was probably a good habit to pick up.

There, leaning against the mirror, I found a most intriguing and peculiar thing--a book with a "FREE BOOK" sticker on it. It was a horror novel about a dead ex-husband, and coming up on my first anniversary not something I particularly wanted to read. However, the web address on the front and the book ID number inside were enough to get me to pick it up and take it home with me.

Through it I have discovered BookCrossing: a free online community where you can register your books and either "release" them "into the wild" or give them a "controlled release" to someone you know. You can even search for books that have been released nearby and go "hunt" them--a very exciting and nerdy sport, somewhat reminiscent of Geohashing. I've seen through the BookCrossing website that there are also other such sports, like Postcrossing.

In fact, now I understand something from the last book I read, The Eyre Affair. There is a group of people in it called the Earthcrossers, who gather together whenever there is a meteor shower and attempt to catch meteorites in special mitts. At least now I sort of get what the author was parodying.

Anyway, this has the potential to be fun, and it is a neat way to get rid of books that you can't sell. I'm planning on BookCrossing five or six of them some time soon... let me know if you want one and I will mail it to you to spread the awesomeness. They are:

Shadowfires, Dean Koontz
The Woad to Wuin, Peter David
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
Many Dimensions, Charles Williams
Waters Luminous and Deep, Meredith Ann Pierce
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary, Seigo Nakao