Help Spread the Words -- BookCrossing

Last December, I found a link to a website that I found absolutely fascinating: BookCrossing.com. What is BookCrossing, you ask? Basically, you take a book you've read. You register it on the website. You label it as having been registered (each book has an individual ID number) and with instructions for the next person to go to the website. Then you release it, leaving it in a public place for someone else to find. (You also make a journal entry on the website so that other BookCrossers in the area can try to "catch" it.) Ideally, the book travels from hand to hand, with its journey documented on the BookCrossing website.

I have a lot of books, and the idea of just passing them on to a complete stranger is intriguing. Somewhere I read a line: "Commit random acts of literacy!". That's exactly what this is!

The only problem I've found thus far is that we don't have very many active BookCrossers in our fair city. There are supposedly more than 100 of us here, but the only active releaser seems to be someone named GooberGuts, and even Goob is somewhat sporadic. (I'm not one to talk -- I have misplaced my one catch and the registered book I was going to release. I know they are here in my office, so it's just a matter of finding them.) So I have decided that it is going to be my personal mission to spread the word about BookCrossing, not only so that this city has a much more active BookCrossing community, but so that the word spreads in general. Literacy is a great gift, and this is just one more way to share it.

I urge -- nay, implore -- anyone reading this to check out the BookCrossing site. It is by far the coolest thing I've seen in a while. It's almost like a scavenger hunt, looking for a book in the wild, and I can't tell you how excited I was when I found a book. (Especially since it was the dead of winter and I was trying to save it from an impending snowstorm.) And it's kind of neat to know that, if I can't travel, maybe something I once read can.

Go ahead and join in the fun! And when you register, tell them BabyRain sent you.

(You know, as much as people go on and on about computers and technology making the world an inhuman place, you gotta admit -- we're using that same technology to find new ways to connect with one another.)