A few weeks before The Books entered my life I discovered a website called Book Crossing. On this site members can register copies of books with unique ID numbers that allow the books to be tracked as they are passed from person to person. Once a copy of a book has been labeled with a Book Crossing ID number it is passed on by either giving it directly to another person or by doing what's called a "wild release" where the book is left in a public place for total strangers to find. Needless to say I was enchanted by the whole concept but before I could really get into it I was bombarded by the Rescued Treasures books.
What I was not expecting was to find a book tagged with a BCID sitting in my house.
The book was called Onwards and Upwards by Arabella Weir and it was just by chance that I noticed the number inside. I was moving books around to make room for the furniture my brother was bringing and getting hopelessly sidetracked by reading covers of books. This book was giving me a hard time because the first page was sticking to the inside of the cover, preventing me from reading the description on the dust jacket. I carefully pulled them apart. There, written in pen, was a BCID number.
I was stunned and couldn't believe my luck. Normally when books are numbered the ID goes on a label that is glued to the inside but there was no label in this book. I suspect that it had one originally but someone along the line removed it. That would explain the stickiness. It was a good thing the person who first labeled the book had the good sense to also write the number in pen on a page.
The fun part about bookcrossing.com is being able to see where books have been. In this case the book was registered by someone who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio and it looks like it has been about three years since someone reported on it's journey.
All book lovers should check out this website.
www.bookcrossing.com
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