If I was a book, I surely wouldn’t like to spend all my life in a bookshelf, dusting and waiting to get outdated. But nowadays, that seems to be the common case, if not onto a stack of them or into a card-box at some dark corner. Sure, it’s better than being burned, but isn’t much better either. And if I was a book, I would want to be read, of course, plenty of times, not just by a single person but by several, learning what were the parts of me that would make them sigh, cry or simply smile. I would have special attention to which sentences would make them pause or read over and over again, like if they were trying to understand and memorize something extremely important. Getting dust on a bookshelf looks a even darker destiny, when one things that a book can for instance, enjoy the wonders of falling on a reader chest that just felt asleep while reading it – being a dream appetizer can only be something great. Oh, and I would like to travel, to travel as much as possible from reader to reader, sharing the underlined sentences and notes some other reader did, like if it was a bonus story. The book story. And this is pretty much what the bookcrossing movement is all about, from a book point of view :-).

My keenness for books has increased since I’ve become a bookcrosser, not so long ago. Although a relatively small country, Portugal is one of the top 10 countries where the movement is more active and thus, meetings take place on a regular basis. Last month, I’ve had the chance to participate on my first bookcrossing meeting, here at Braga. It had place at Café Vianna and had the participation of a few Spanish bookcrossers who got dazzled by the amount of churchs Braga has. The event was relevant enough to get covered by one of the city newspapers – something that was a surprise to everyone. Books were exchanged, talked about and above all, everybody had a good time. There are some photos of the meeting here.

Speaking about bookcrossing meetings and photos, I’ve noticed that there wasn’t any group at flickr for bookcrossing pictures so I’ve created one so that people can post their pictures of books, bookcrossing meet-ups and such.