BookCrossing

We ended up back at the London Literature Festival today, not for any particular performance, but rather for its BookCrossing event. BookCrossing is a very simple, rather fantastic activity that you can participate in any time that you want! The main principle is simple: people “release” books (that they’ve finished reading, want others to read, or just don’t want anymore) in public locations, known as “the wild." Each book contains an ID number, a brief explanation of BookCrossing, and the website address. If you find such a book, you go to the website and enter the ID number, which lets the previous owner of the book know the book has been “captured.” Then you are welcome to keep it for as long as you want, but the spirit of BookCrossing also asks you to release the book into the wild again when you’re done with it, along with an explanation of where and when you did so. The hope is that a given book will travel around from reader to reader, rather than getting read once (or not at all) and then sitting on a shelf. It’s an activity that doesn’t require new financial output and will hopefully result in literary gain. Penguin donated 1,000 London-themed books to today’s BookCrossing event, and the books were released into the wild at Southbank. Today’s pouring rain limited the books to indoor locations, but it was still fun to come across books just waiting for new homes. A book exchange shed had been set up behind the Royal Festival Hall,

but most of the books we saw were just sitting on tables, chairs, and banisters throughout the Royal Festival Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Some had post-its on their covers saying, “I’m free!” (which isn’t usually part of the BookCrossing ethic),
but others were truer to form, with nothing to identify them as books for the taking
until you opened their front covers. A few of the books we found were part of the 1,000
but we also found two (the two sitting on the table above) which were left by a BookCrossing participant who took advantage of the event to leave some books of her/ his own. These books had the usual BookCrossing tags inside:
From Southbank, we braved the pouring rain as we walked to Borough Market for some delicious lunches standing under the dripping train bridge, then decided to head home to lie around and enjoy our Saturday Guardian in drier surroundings. A wee resident of our street caught my attention on the sidewalk a few houses away from our own:
Bob was concerned that the snail would get stepped on, and suggested moving him away from the curb (or "kerb," as it's spelled here). When I tried to pick him up, it seemed that our little snail friend had already suffered some misadventures, since his shell was a bit cracked. "I can't do it!" I said, as the shell gave way to soft flesh, so Bob bent down and picked up our friend, depositing him on some nearby grass.