Have you heard of BookCrossing?

Just before Christmas I went for a walk along the Yarra River with my friend Val. We took photos and did some sketching, and I posted the story here. But I forgot to mention something very interesting that happened while we were strolling along. We found a bench in the shade and went over to sit down, and found a book lying on the seat. Both of us being booklovers, we had the same reaction of “Oh no!! Someone’s left their book behind!” But when Val picked it up, we noticed a printed sticker on the front. It read “I’m not lost, I’m on a journey” with some more writing under that. It turned out to be a book registered with BookCrossing, an organisation whose members deliberately leave books in public places, marked so that they can be identified as a ‘travelling book’. Every book has its own identification number, just as they do in a library. The idea is that you read it, then leave it in another public place for someone else to find and read. If you have access to the Internet, you can register with the website and look up the book you have read, post a comment about where and when you found it, and where you left it afterwards. Apparently there are several million books ‘travelling’ around the world – isn’t that fantastic?

The book we found was “Anne Of Avonlea”, which is the second book in the "Anne Of Green Gables” series. Much to my astonishment, Val hadn’t read it! She was a librarian in a university before she retired, but I guess they wouldn’t have children's classics there. Even so, Val is such a prolific reader, I really thought she would have read it. So I’ve told her I will lend "Anne Of Green Gables" to her and she MUST read it! I’ve passed on the BookCrossing copy of "Anne Of Avonlea" to a lady who lives in a country town. My friend Helen had her sister Shirley staying with her over Christmas, and I popped in to say hi. I was telling them about BookCrossing, and as they are also great readers, I asked Shirley if she’d like to take the book and leave it somewhere in her town when she goes home. She thought it was a great idea, and as she had read "Green Gables", she was keen to read the follow up book.