Life

The palms of my hands dampened and my heart thumped fast. Surreptitiously, I scanned the train again. We coasted into the platform, and the briefcase-clutching, umbrella-wielding crowd made their way towards the door. I slid my book- Hanif Kureishi’s Love in a Blue Time- between two seats. A veiled glance at my fellow passengers: no one saw. I breathed again. Off the train, and up the escalator, my heart still jumped. Pace increasing, I pulled down my hat. Almost out of the station. I had done it- I had released my first book. My smile spread, until rapidly approaching footsteps reached me. A tap on my shoulder. “Excuse me, Miss” said a kindly man, handing me my book; “I think you left this behind.” Darn.

The BookCrossing organisation- nay, movement- claims, with 250,000 members globally, to be the largest Book Group in the world. This is the deal: you register at BookCrossing.com, tag one of your books with the special BookCrossing number generated by the website, and then “release it to the wild.” With any luck- and if you do it properly- your book will be rescued- or, as they say - captured. The book-catcher is invited, via use of the BookCrossing code number and website, to update the travels of the book, read and discuss it and, in BookCrossing spirit, passing it on. While they suggest that airports are to be avoided- unattended books being a possible source of a security alert- the world is, if not your oyster, certainly your library.

Book capture can be the product of pre-arrangement with another member, pure serendipity, or via ‘book hunting’. Urban warriors in pursuit need an Internet connection, some free time, and a bit of nerve. At 20-minute intervals you can be e-mailed notes on local releases, and as I write, there are 2,238 books ‘in the wilds’, of the UK, with 145 awaiting ‘capture’ in London alone. Ben Okri’s Infinite Riches lies awaiting plunder in the ‘Crossing Zone’ of the east side of London Bridge. In a phone box in Cromwell Road, Kensington, is Mary Higgins Clark’s Daddy’s Little Girl, which was previously ‘caught’ in Oslo. In Prêt a Manger, Bond Street, ‘Rebecca’ demurely awaits attention. The Wings of a Dove just touched down in a bus in Oxford, and washed up on a bench in Pydar Street in Truro, is Murdoch’s The Sea The Sea.

Globally, there are thousands; in the Mango Bay Hotel in Barbados, in the Teatro Municipal, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in the Torgovy Komplek, Irkutsk, BookCrossing books are in the wild. It’s exciting; vicarious travel for those of us afraid of airplanes, all the thrills of briefcase-exchanging espionage, but with none of the concomitant risks to life or limb. It’s Bond for the shy and fearful, and I wanted to play too.

I had special reasons for joining. Whether my Book Group had been a creation and then a victim of the vagaries of fashion, or whether it had simply evolved into a pleasant evening without the need to rely on a book for conversation (for I was the only one to have read the designated book at the last three gatherings), I was bookishly hungry. A global Book Group sounded good.

Not that it is without pain. For true BookCrossing, you have to give away- yes- give away- your favourite books. I am surely not the only girl whose bookshelf is not simply a pile of bound paper, but an intimate historical discourse on my live and loves. I couldn’t give them away. The book trade need not fear for falling sales, as I merely bought copies of my books and gave away- sorry- released -those instead.

My next sojourn into the BookCrossing Zone was also unsuccessful. With trembling excitement, I tagged my book, ready for release in a café next to a Mathematics department of nearby University. Simon Singh’s Fermat’s Last Theorem is one of my favourite books, and made me regard maths with the same passionate rush that Sarah Jessica Parker surely keeps for Manolo Blahnik. I thus thought the clientele likely to appreciate it. Onto a visible shelf, I released my book. Unable to contain my bubbling excitement, I went immediately home, and straight onto my email. Nothing. Ten minutes later. Nothing. I continued clicking with increasing frequency, trepidation and horror as I realised that my book was really and truly abandoned. On Day 4, by now checking my email sulkily and only slightly less frequently, I was trying to cheer myself with the thought that perhaps my book was being enjoyed by someone without internet access. Yeah, right. Day Five and I was drawn back to the scene. There was my book, stickered with the luminous yellow BookCrossing label, unwanted and literally on the shelf. Ah, rejection. What did I do wrong? The wrong title? Are people too suspicious or well behaved to pick up abandoned books? Is it the fear of germs, cons or suspicion that this is weird chain mail?

I lured a friend to help. “This book is fabulous,” I said, of What I Loved, by Siri Hudsvelt; “I envy someone reading it for the first time.” I was just about to debate where in the Art Gallery to leave it, when my friend asked for a look. “Mind if I have a read first?” he asked. And of course, I haven’t seen it since. Which is all very well, but my global BookCrossing adventure has yet to begin. So if you see a lonely book with a bright yellow sticker on it, please don’t ignore it. You might be about to make my day.

www.BookCrossing.com