under the blanket

I've got a big smile on my face and it's not just because I finally finished my last story for school and will not have to write another feature for at least two months. I really enjoyed writing about the subject -- as opposed to child abusers and business plans to rejuvenate south-east London -- and actually taking part in the whole phenomenon, which I'm hoping to brainwash you guys into joining too. So here's the story. [And yes, any kind feedback would be very helpful, since I have to submit this on Friday.]

Lost and Found

Finders aren’t keepers, and losers aren’t weepers.
Voracious readers have been deliberately misplacing their
books to spread their love of literature

Glancing furtively around Piccadilly Circus, Paul Kutasi slipped a slim paperback out from his coat pocket and picked his way towards the end of the platform, all the time keeping an eye out for the ubiquitous Tube inspectors.

As the train pulled into the station, he surreptitiously dropped his book -- a still-pristine copy of Crazy by Benjamin Lebert -- onto the bench and melted into the rush hour crowd without a backward glance.

Even though the 21-year-old filmmaker did not see if anyone spotted the book he had abandoned, he could not suppress the sly smile on his face.

He had officially joined the BookCrossing movement.

“Basically, what we’re doing is like giving away clothes that you have overgrown,” he says. “Once you have read a book, you may want to share it with other people. I think in some sort of way it can encourage reading.”

The way BookCrossing works is this: You register the book you want to “release into the wild”, as it is called at website www.bookcrossing.com. The book is given a unique ID number, which you can then write onto a label printed from the site.

Pasted on the book, the nifty label directs anyone who finds the book to the website to discover where it has been and who has read it.

The man who dreamt up the idea two years ago of “reading and releasing books into the wild” is Ron Hornbaker, a 36-year-old software developer from Missouri who runs his own computer company but makes no money from BookCrossing.com.

There are no irritating pop-up ads, registration details are kept strictly confidential, and the site relies purely on word of mouth to lure book lovers.

It is a labour of love for him, as he says: “It gives people a way to share their books without feeling like they’re losing something. It’s like a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries.”

With over 126,000 registered members worldwide -- including 6,730 in UK -- this online bookclub that Hornbaker started in 2001 is slowly but surely moving towards his goal to “make the whole world a library”.

He adds: “It is the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing.”

It is also when the fun begins.

During his little espionage episode on the Tube, Kutasi recalls feeling “kind of weird”.

He adds: “I was sort of hoping they didn’t think it was a suspicious package and delay the trains because of me.”

Another member of this guerilla group, Leonie Mann, says: “I felt a bizarre thrill or momentary rush when I released my first book.”

With 29 books wilfully left all over London over the past 10 months, she is among the top 50 BookCrossers in the UK and is definitely addicted to what she describes as “reverse stealing”.

“There is a similar guilty adrenaline rush because mentally it's a challenge to just abandon your property. It seems to go against the grain of the societal norms most of us are ingrained with,” says the 30-year-old researcher.

Most recently, she left a copy of Doris Birtles’ The Overlanders in the toilet cubicle during the intermission of My Fair Lady at the Drury Lane Theatre and it was picked up and taken to Ireland.

“I think the randomness and chance aspect of the site is something I relate to the most,” she says, but there is also a practical aspect to it.

“As I've spent the past four years travelling and living in different countries I've become adept at shedding possessions. Before I left home there was no way I'd be able to let a book go,” she says. “Due to the constraints of carrying everything I owned it became easier and easier to let go of items.”

Those enamoured of this whole exercise in serendipity -- besides obviously being book lovers and Internet savvy -- share an altruistic streak.

“There are so many books going to waste on the bookshelf that have been read,” says Kutasi. “Probably not going to read them again, so why not share?”

Agreeing with him, legal secretary Joanna Moncrieff says: “I was having a bit of a clear-out of books I knew I would never read again to friends and charity shops, so when I found out about BookCrossing, I thought I’d combine the two.”

“I prefer the random nature of leaving books in cafes and introducing strangers to BookCrossing. There is a buzz from having a book picked up and getting an email to say that the person was ‘very pleased’ as happened with one of my successes,” she says.

Mann adds: “Charity-oriented people like that they can give books away to people who might not be able to afford them. There are those who love the idea of spreading literacy into communities who may not have access to books under normal circumstances.

“The artistic like the performance art part of the release, as in they can photograph and describe the why's and wherefore's of their release and capture the moment in some way.”

Despite having only six of her 33 “misplaced” books found, Moncrieff says: “I don’t think it is a waste of a good book as generally people will pick up the book, unless there are all these books languishing in the lost property office after being left on the train, which is why I stopped leaving them on trains.”

Other reasons for the rather discouraging success rate of 25 per cent include no access to the Internet, pure apathy in registering the book online and, as Moncrieff puts it, “the suspicion of English people of anything free”.

Although Britain prides itself as a nation of book lovers, it still lags behind America and Italy in this worldwide movement that combines the romantic idea of a message in a bottle, the digital reality of the Internet and the karma of literature.

Mann says: “I hope the catch rate will increase as time goes by and awareness develops but part of the joy to me is that it is a gamble.

“The juiciest book in the most inventive of release locations may never be heard from again but a run-of-the-mill romance or thriller tossed absentmindedly onto a train seat may touch several lives and be read and released over and over again.”

And the karma of literature goes on.