Once you have read a book, what do you do with it?
In most cases, it gather’s dust in your bookshelf. There are very few which we re-read or refer to over and over again. But the majority of them just lie there on the shelf waiting to be picked up again. Ron Hornbaker of Idaho came up with the idea of this site for the book-lovers. He urges them not be “shelf”ish with their books and invites them to share their books with other book lovers. How? Now that’s the interesting bit.
Users can log in to this site called bookcrossing.com and create a unique ID for their books, label it and then “release” it. By “release” it he means give the book to a friend, relative, colleague or just leave the book at some place like a coffee shop, park or any other place where it is likely to be picked by another book-lover.
When the book gets picked, the reader can report on this site that the book has been “caught” by entering the unique ID.
Sometimes this cycle can be repeated many times before the trail is lost. And the journal entries created in the process allow you to track where your book has travelled – and it can be quite interesting.
The top 10 BookCrossing countries
1. USA …………………….29%
2. Germany ……………16%
3. United Kingdom ..13%
4. Netherlands ……….11%
5. Finland ………………10%
6. Canada …………………8%
7. Australia ………………5%
8. France ………………….4%
9. Portugal ……………….3%
10. Spain ………………….1%
So far this concept is popular mostly in the Western part of the globe. With reading emerging as a popular hobby in India and with a young population which is ready to experiment with new concepts and ideas, this idea of book sharing has a lot of potential in Indian context too. I know a lot of book sharing happens in smaller groups of known people but this can take book sharing to a whole new level.
