Ever been reading a paper or a book and then left it on the train or at a bus stop for someone else?
Bookcrossing.com is a site that lets you register where you left a book and what the book was. When you leave the book you also leave a bookcrossing id in it so that when someone finds it they can go to the website and add to the journal entry for the book. Who knows, the book travel further than you ever will! What surprised me was how many books there are in Brisbane and Queensland. Even one just down the road from me.
They aren’t the first lot to come up with the idea though. One of the first implementations was a disposable camera swap from Phototag. The idea is someone finds a camera, takes one photo and then passes it off to someone else. The final photographer then pops it in to the mail to send back to phototag who then publish the photos. Pretty cool idea. Unfortunately though there are quite a few missing cameras.
I wonder when someone is going to leave a usb mp3 player around with the idea of copying one song to the player then passing it on. Maybe when usb drives become so mainstream life that everyone has one and doesn’t mind passing it on.
Oh, I feel so “Oprah make a difference” right now. 😀
I think that is the coolest idea! Although I never catch trains or buses, and it’s highly unlikely that I could start an idea like that where people find my book in my car, and send it to me. I’d be wondering why they were in my car looking for books in the first place, although I could understand if someone STOLE my car but cared enough to return my book.
Okay, I wish to state that my previous comment was a blonde moment. I didn’t realise that you purposely left your book there so someone else could read it. I thought that if you ever put it down and lost it, but you had a mark thingo in it they could find out where you are and send it back to you. Oh my god I should lay off the stress from work – it’s really starting to affect my perception – I can’t even read a sentence properly. Anyway, now that I’ve had a proper look at their website, I still think it’s a cool idea, except the only 3 books on the Sunshine Coast have been taken by one chick!! I’ll have to keep checking to see if she releases them 🙂
I went looking for a book that had recently been released in to the wild through bookcrossing, but it wasn’t there. I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that the book was in a garden at Southbank and I went looking the day after they had cleaned up after riverfire. So I shall continue to go looking in my quest to find a bookcrossing book.
Was looking for this post cause I couldn’t remember the website, and I decided I wanted to see if there was another bookcrossing book anywhere nearby. I noticed you had a quest to find one – did you?