Book Crossing

I was leafing through an issue of Mental Floss magazine when I came upon an ad for Bookcrossing.com. Pretty neat stuff. Sort of like the well-known Where's George site does for money, Book Crossing allows people to tag books before releasing them as free offerings in some public place. The idea is that whoever finds the book and decides to take it home will go to the site, enter in the book's ID number, write a journal entry about it, and then pass it on for someone else to enjoy. As the person who registered the book, one can track the progress of the book throughout the years to see how it's touched random people's lives.

I sort of like communal things like this. Hell, every now and then, the Dalai Mama and I jokingly consider selling everything and going Zendik. While that's not really going to happen, giving away books to is. I'm starting with Dostoevsky's "The Idiot," which had a profound effect on me when I read it a couple of months ago. This one is going to be a "controlled release," meaning I'm giving it to a friend, but when she's finished with it (and after she logs it into the site), she can put it wherever she wants. Tonight I'll find something cool to release directly into the wild, like at my favorite coffee shop. If you've ever been to the Blue Moose, you know exactly what I mean by wild.