Free range books

I came across this interesting website called BookCrossing. It’s basically a tag-and-release program for books, a kind of infinite book exchange. It works like this: when you’re done reading a book, you go to the website, register and label the book with a unique ID number, and then release it “into the wild”–give it away, sell it, leave it somewhere, whatever. (After I finished Harry Potter on an airplane, I considered leaving it in the seat pocket in front of me, but was afraid it would just get thrown away.) Then, as people find or receive these labeled books, they too can go to the website, and using the ID number, add a journal entry with a review or notes, for example, where they found the book, and so on, creating a record of that book’s provenance and its travels around the globe. I’m sure the website explains this more clearly than I can. It’s a pretty neat idea.