THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BOOK CLUB

Ever hear of BookCrossing? Me Neither! That is until another blogger brought it to my attention. They claim to be the World's Biggest Book Club. They even have the concept "bookcrossing" in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, as of August of 2004.

bookcrossing ........ n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.

Their site states : "You've come to a friendly place, and we welcome you to our book-lovers' community. Our members love books enough to let them go -- into the wild -- to be found by others. Sharing your used books has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with Book Crossing. Our goal, simply is to make the whole world a library. Bookcrossing is a free online book club of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind. Inside, you'll find millions of book reviews and hundreds of thousands of passionate readers just like you."

There are 3 Rs involved in participating: 1) READ a good book. 2) REGISTER it at their website (along with your comments). They will give you a unique BCID (Bookcrossing ID number) in order to make a label for the book. 3) RELEASE it for someone else to read. Give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, "forget" it in a coffee shop, etc. You will get notified by email each time someone comes to the site and records a journal entry for that book.

So go grab a book or two from your shelves now (they're not doing anyone any good there, are they?), register them, jot down their URL and the BCID they give you and then give them away or leave them where someone will find them.

Right now there are over 3.5 MILLION books in the program!

For more information on the program simply go to http://www.bookcrossing.com/