Book Crossing

While in a pretty sweet underground cafe in Stockholm's Gamla Stan district, I came across a book that was participating in an awesome project called Book Crossing.

The idea is similar to a random free global library. Someone reads a book, registers it on the website, leaves the book somewhere in the hopes that it will soon be picked up by someone else to read. Each participating book has a tracking number so you can log into the website, enter the book's number and track where it's been, who it has been read by and their review of the book. You then enter information regarding the book's current whereabouts so that others can see where the book has traveled.

You can also search for specific books that are still "out in the wild." If the location is close enough to you, you can set out to find it like some hidden treasure!

I picked up Helen Fielding's "Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination." It's not my typical genre of book but I liked the idea of Book Crossing so I took the book back with me to Istanbul.

I managed to read the entire book during the course of my massively long 28 hour flight from Istanbul back to San Francisco and I've now left the book at a cafe in my hometown of Fremont, California.

I went back to the cafe and the book is no longer there though I haven't received a notice that someone has registered picking up the book on the website! I'm curious to see who picked up the book and where it will go next so whoever picked it up, register it please! I'm equally interested in seeing if I'll come across more Book Crossings in the near future!

Happy book hunting!

© Connie Hum 2009