Subject: BS: A Terrific Literary Scheme!
From:
Amos
Date: 29 Sep 02 - 06:32 PM
From a friend who say "I can't remember the last time a newspaper article made me smile so much!"
Pass Words
By John Wilkens
STAFF WRITER - San Diego Union-Tribune
September 29, 2002
The trick, they say, is not getting caught. Nothing is as embarrassing as having someone run after you screaming, "Hey, you forgot your book!"
Lucila De Alejandro of North Park knows. She's been nabbed a couple of times. She tried to explain that she meant to leave the book there. Really. "They don't always get it," she said.
But more and more people are getting it. San Diego County is a hotbed for one of the Internet's latest crazes, BookCrossing. Part spy game, part treasure hunt, it's like a message-in-a-bottle for the literary set.
Here's how it works:
You register a book at the club's Web site (bookcrossing.com) and are given an identification number. You put a label with the number inside the book, along with a note explaining that the book is a gift meant to be read and passed along.
Then you tuck the book someplace where it will be found: a park bench, a hotel lobby, a shopping mall elevator.
And then you wait.
If it works the way it's supposed to, the person who finds the book will read it and – using the identification number – log an entry on the Web site. Then that person will set the book free again.
De Alejandro, a 30-year-old writer, has left books in stores, at the car wash, in the waiting room of the oil-change place. "I've left trashy mystery novels at pools in Las Vegas," she said.
For her, there's romance in the adventure.
"I'm taking a huge chance, a hopeful chance, that if I leave this book in this park, in this cafe, at this airport, that someone might pick it up, out of curiosity or boredom, and read the welcome note on the inside cover," she said.
"That note may inspire them to take the book, read it, and then release it themselves. And then that they might actually find me on the Web site to comment on a book they found. That is so cool to me!"
Cool to Darcy Chambers, too. The executive assistant from the College Area had a friend leave three books on the southbound Coaster. One of them, Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild," got picked up by someone who posted this note on the Web site: "This is one of the best books I have ever read. Thank you for setting it free for me to find."
That person in turn left the book on the Coaster, where it wound up with yet another reader, who logged this entry: "I was in the middle of a John Irving novel when the conductor passed this to me. Last year I read Krakauer's 'Into Thin Air,' which was great, so I was excited that this book found me. I started reading it right away and it was hard to put down. I will pass it along."
Said Chambers: "I can't tell you how fun it was to know my book had found a new reader."
Ron Hornbaker thought he had a good idea. But not this good.
An executive with a software company in Kansas City, Mo., Hornbaker knew about the success of Internet sites like wheresgeorge.com, which traces dollar bills around the country, and phototag.org, which follows disposable cameras.
"What else might people like to track?" he remembered wondering one day in March 2001. Then he swiveled around in his chair and saw his bookcase.
"Everybody loves books," Hornbaker said. "I love books. And I love that feeling of wanting to share a really good book with people when I finish it."
He had BookCrossing up and running a month later. It started slowly, gaining about 100 members in the first year. Then Book magazine did a story, and other media followed, and Hornbaker had a deluge on his hands.
The site adds about 380 members each day, he said, and the club's ranks have swelled to about 34,000, with projections to reach 175,000 worldwide in a year. In San Diego County, there are about 270 members.
Club members have registered almost 80,000 books. Most who join do so to give away books, but some are also there to find them, Hornbaker said. Members can list on the Web site where they've dropped the books.
"It's nice to be able to get new books like this since as a college student I'm working under a limited income," Jennifer Clark said. The Mesa College sophomore recently found "Moll Flanders" at the Fashion Valley mall.
There is no fee to join. The members are anonymous. Hornbaker said the site costs about $1,500 a month to run, which he offsets by selling T-shirts, hats and other BookCrossing merchandise.
"I'm totally surprised at the response," he said. "I didn't think it would generate this kind of excitement. For some people, it's become almost like a religion."
Those are the people who stack books by their front doors so they'll remember to take one when they go out. They spend time scouting their cities for good drop spots.
"We have people who have released almost 700 books all by themselves," Hornbaker said. One lady in Missouri is planning to turn at least one book loose in every state.
Some are so into it they debate the necessity of matching the book to the release place – a book about Michelangelo, say, left at a museum, or something about animals left at the zoo.
In these post 9/11 days, though, some locations are better than others. Hornbaker said he had an e-mail the other day from officials in Phoenix, who had an "anthrax scare" when someone left a book behind in a post office.
"When people are scared of a book in a post office, what kind of a world is it?" he said. "But that's the way it is now. People have to think about where they are releasing books. Leaving one at the airport's probably not a good idea right now."
Joan (she asked that her last name not be used because of past unpleasantries with "weirdos on the Internet") has released seven books. The law librarian from Hillcrest said she's left them at the Hillcrest post office, on the No. 7 bus, at the Mission Valley YMCA.
She likes the "random acts of kindness" aspect of the club, and the idea that "books should be in the hands of readers, not just filling shelves."
And, of course, "There's the entertainment value: a little cloak-and-dagger skulking to make sure nobody sees you leave it." Some BookCrossers have been known to slip their gifts into odd places like vending machines and the ice-cream cases in grocery stores.
So far, nobody has logged onto the Web site to report finding Joan's books. Hornbaker said that's not unusual.
"We've heard back on only a minority of the books," he said, adding that there are several possible reasons: Maybe the finders have no access to the Internet; or the books wind up in some facility's lost-and-found; or the finders leave them on nightstands for months before opening them.
"I tell people to be patient," Hornbaker said. "It's like a message in a bottle. You can't expect them all to get found. But the ones that do really make your day."
He shared a couple of his favorites. An 18-year-old student in California took Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" to Europe and released it in Italy. A man from Baltimore found it in Florence, and took it to the Czech Republic, where he lives.
Another member released Sophie Kinsella's "Shopaholic Takes Manhattan" at a Starbucks in Maryland. Someone found it and carried it home to Cairo.
Grace Guderjahn, a 73-year-old grandmother from San Marcos, said she left one book at the House of Friendship in Barcelona, Spain, and dropped another – "Dust to Dust," by Tami Hoag – on a cruise ship.
"As the months and years go on, as more time passes for these books to get read and then travel around, it will be interesting to hear some of the stories," Hornbaker said.
When it comes to deciding which books to "set free," most people choose ones they've enjoyed, "books that speak to them," Hornbaker said.
Shannon Martin of Allied Gardens understands the feeling. Her books, she said, "have been a part of me." She didn't want to sell them. But when she heard about BookCrossing, she decided she could give them away.
On a recent trip to Northern California, she took about 200 books to scatter here and there. "To find one, and open it up and begin to read – well, it has to be like finding a treasure of some kind," she said.
But some people are too attached to their books to let them go. For them there's a solution, Hornbaker said, one used by several club members.
They buy two copies, keep one and set the other free.
|
sj
