Owning books is not, in most cases, like owning CDs or movies, which you will often enjoy multiple times in your lifetime/the past month. If you are as musically inclined as I am, it is much to the annoyance of those around you. And if you liked [Will Ferrell movie here] as much as every other college kid did, it is much to my annoyance.
Save a few sacred favorites, my books are sadly banished to a sedentary life on the shelf once I've read them. Unless someone slams the door to our apartment really hard. Then they spend a good week or two vacationing on the floor.
During the school year, reading a book not on any course syllabus requires more commitment than most of us are willing to put into showering every morning. It also results in less sleep and more coffee, a balance that is already unhealthily disproportionate in my life.
But for now, what can I do to save my books from neglect and dust? I would like to spare them damnation akin to cans of soup in the pantry. I can push them onto friends who would appreciate them if they had time. When we lend books to each other during the school year, they are often returned unread and with stains from aforementioned coffee.
Enter another global experiment in uniting complete strangers, Bookcrossing.com. Participants register a book online, which gets them a little card complete with a unique ID number. The book is then driven out to the country and left by the side of the road. Kind of. There's a much happier ending. The original owner is supposed to attach the card to the book and leave the book in a place where fate is likely to kick in and get it found.
The book's finder can tell his/her story on the site. He/she can reveal how they became acquainted with the book and whether or not they hit it off. The original owner of the book can attempt to track their books in potentially exciting, exotic locales and read what people thought of it. It all seems rather idyllic so long as I am not forced to become jealous of my book when it gets to Europe before I do.
This game of literary catch and release has been successful. The site boasts over 5,000 visitors a week, although the creator, Ron Hornbaker, admits that those who donate their books to the virtual library may have to refrain from checking the site as often as Facebook. It can sometimes be years before original owners hear of their books' life in, as Hornbaker puts it, ""the wild.""
I can imagine those books could often find themselves in situations of potential exploitation. It would be really difficult to resist all the cold hard cash you could get from generous places like the University Bookstore. I could potentially go all out at the Halloween candy half-price sale. But I'm going to concede that the perpetual circulation of ideas and random acts of kindness on the part of bibliophiles are more rewarding, even more so than stale candy corn.
