by Anne-Lise, a new bookcrosser
(Nov 3, 2003)

You love reading,
you are not selfish,
you want to share something,
you think a bottle with a mail in the sea is fantastic….

Be a BOOKCROSSER ! ! ! !

Bookcrossing was born in 2001 in the USA. Ron Hornbacker created it, inspired by two other sites:

www.wheresgeorges.com : you can follow your one-dollar note, with its own number.

www.phototag.org : a person forgets a disposable camera in a public place; each person who finds it takes a photograph and forgets it again; the last person must send it to the first one who publishes all of the photographs on the web.Bookcrossing is the same thing but with a book : you release a book in a public place and wait until someone finds it. Ron Hornbacker compares books on shelves to  birds in cages, and he wants to transform the world into a huge library.

TO BECOME A BOOKCROSSER :

- take a book

- go to www.bookcrossing.com : record your book with a BCID number ( its own number ) and print the bookcrossing’s label, with an explanation. You can write a note on your book such as : I am free or I am not lost, please read me…..

- release it anywhere : in a train, on a bench, in the street, in a supermarket…

About 35,000 books are free in the USA, but only 50 in France. So….

Join the bookcrossers' club! it is easy and free !

If you wish to react to this article, write to the editor.

I'm very happy that a thing like that exists. It's very good because I love reading, and nowadays books are very expensive. When you read a book a week you have to be rich! The best thing in this new idea it's that there will no longer be a book without a reader, a book could be read as much as possible! It's very interesting to imagine leaving a book in a park. And another anonymous person goes to find it and perhaps reads it. It gives books a history! Books pass through a lot of hands, and a lot of people, poor or rich, could read it with the same desire to leave their lives behind! I don't know who has invented this but it must be a book fanatic!

We love reading, we are not selfish (except concerning our boyfriend of course!), we'd like to share something, and we also think a message in a bottle with a mail in the sea is absolutely fantastic!

Dear Anne-Lise, we liked your discovery. It seems to be a very interesting idea, all the more so as we had never heard about it in France before. Even though it's a good thing for Bookcrossing to develop and for minds to get rich of it, we are afraid of the books being destroyed.

Thanks for this initiative. Keep up your good work!