I received today my first book from bookcrossing. It came from Greece in a neat brown package and I’m just thrilled with the idea that bookcrossing actually works.

For the ones who might not know bookcrossing yet, the main idea is quite simple: people start by registering books they have at bookcrossing.com and tag them with a number and some instructions. Then, they release it and that’s when the real book crossing starts. There are several methods for doing it and I think I still don’t know them all. The classic one is to release it into the wild by leaving it at some place where it can be found by someone else. Although it sounds nice, this method has proved to get many books lost. Alternatively, one of the most used methods are book rings where the book travels around the people that have subscribe to it and in the end the book returns to it’s original owner. Book rays, same as the previous, but the book keeps traveling ad infinitum. And, of course, simply borrowing it to anyone interested. Oh, yes, there are also RABCK (Random Acts of Bookcrossing Kindness) where someone wants to send a book to someone else randomly, who then reads it and sends it to someone else they randomly find on the site.
It’s possible to check at anytime who first registered a book, where it has been and who has it at the moment through journal entries that each registered book has.
I’m aware that this idea doesn’t attract everyone and even myself only got really interested now, although I heard about it sometime ago. In what comes to books, I hardly read one twice and, unless it’s not mine, why not allow someone else to read it? Most books are too precious to keep in a bookshelf for years IMHO, plus, this way books come with bonus stories about the traveling they already made meeting different places and readers. It’s something like free software meeting project Gutenberg meeting interactive global library. :-)