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A group of guerrilla readers use serendipity to spread their love of literature

July/August 2002 Issue

By Rob Brookman, Book

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WHEN KARIN MILLER FOUND a paperback abandoned in a Dallas conference room, she counted herself lucky. After all, the book, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, was by one of her favorite authors, science fiction novelist Sheri S. Tepper. But there was more than luck at work in Miller’s find. "I noticed this note on the front cover that said something like, ‘Please read me. I’m not lost. I’m traveling around trying to make friends,’ " Miller says. "I thought, This is like finding a Cracker Jack box with a really great prize."The prize was more than a single book; it was an invitation to play a part in an unlikely global sociology experiment spearheaded by a Web site called BookCrossing.com. The brainchild of a group of Kansas City–based computer consultants, BookCrossing.com encourages people to experience what it terms "the karma of literature" by registering books at the site and then depositing them in public places, like coffee shops, airplane seat pockets, and park benches. Part book club, part behavioral study, part note-in-a-bottle exercise, it’s a concept entirely made possible by the interconnectivity of the Internet.It works like this: Every book registered at BookCrossing.com receives a unique ID number and a registration card to be printed and attached inside the front cover. The card briefly explains the BookCrossing.com mission and directs anyone who finds a book to its dedicated online journal page. There, recipients can post where they came across the book and—if they read it—what they thought of it.But in keeping with a favorite BookCrossing.com mantra, finders are not encouraged to become keepers. "We call it ‘read and release,’" says co-founder Ron Allen Hornbaker. "It gives people a way to share their books without feeling like they’re losing something."

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