The Art of Bookcrossing

In August it will be 3 years since I became a member of bookcrossing.com. It's an interesting concept; particularly for those who not only love to read but love to pass a good book on for someone else to read. How do we do it? How can we possibly leave books lying around, hoping someone else will find them and love them but knowing that they might end up discarded or damaged? It's not easy at first, I can assure you. Being a bookcrosser is fun and can be quite exciting - it can also be an exercise in frustration.

Bookcrossing.com works like this: after an individual signs up, they select any books that they might want to share, pass on, release, etc. The books in question are then registered on the site and you're given a BCID (bookcrossing ID), which you note in the book with some mention of the website. This ID number is how you keep track of the books you release. After that's done you release them in any way you choose. When the book is found, if the finder is so inclined they can visit the site, enter the BCID and make a journal entry for the book - and they don't even have to register.

Signing up is easy. It's going through your collection of books and finding the ones you're willing to give up that's the hard part. It took me about 2 weeks to have five books from my collection that I was willing to part with. So I started ordering lots of used books on ebay to read, register and release. It's part of how I got out of my re-reading rut.