If you love your books, let them go…

Did you ever look at your bookshelf and see a book you liked (or didn’t like) that you have a spare copy of, that’s just taking up space or that you won’t read again?
Just finished a book on your holiday, knowing you probably won’t read it again, feeling it will only take up space on your journey home…?

Set it free !

You can either leave it behind for the next guest at your holiday cottage or villa and earn some “Karma” or why not follow your book around the globe using the “Bookcrossing” service?

BookCrossing tries to combine serendipity, adventure, altruism and literature in a unique mix that true bibliophiles must find irresistible.

Somehow similar to releasing messages in a bottle, or notes in helium balloons, BookCrossing hearkens back to fond childhood memories. BookCrossing aims at making the whole world a library and considers their service an ideal activity for parents and teachers to encourage children to read and share and the perfect way to encourage literacy and learning.

So how does it work?

• You can register your book on www.bookcrossing.com. Each book registered on BookCrossing receives its very own BCID (BookCrossing ID number), which enables members to “tag and track” the book as it journeys through life.
• The book is labeled with BCID and site information, then left somewhere (“released”) for someone else to find.
• People who find (“catch” in BookCrossing lingo) a wild book are invited to visit the site to see where the book has been and what previous readers have thought about it.
• They can make an entry about the book anonymously or join BookCrossing (it’s free!) and track the book’s future travels.
• Journal entries are relayed to all previous readers by our secure messaging system so that they, too, can follow the book’s adventures.

A (bit older) video about bookcrossing:

We invite you to give this service a try and please let us know what you think.