This was originally published on my old blog BackpackBook (Livro de Mochila), a project that blended literature and travel, sometimes just traveling in my lucid dreams. It ran as âEm busca dos livros perdidosâ on July 16, 2007.
A tribe out there is practicing an interesting activity. After traveling with the stories inside books, they decided to literally give the books themselves a taste of a good adventure.
The books are left, or “lost”, on purpose in public places, and they wake up the curiosity of whoever walks past one of these traveling books. Anybody brave enough to pick one up is encouraged to keep its trip going.
Traveling books
I had already thought about this, but I only found the courage after finding other people around the world doing it. It started with a post by Alessandro Martins explaining how to make your book travel the whole world, which at that moment gave me the urge to run out with an armful of books and fling them around like a paper boy.
Alessandro still does this. He even tried the Book Crossing site, a community specialized in exactly that, where he could in theory track his books’ journeys. Unfortunately the site didn’t work out as well as he hoped, which hasn’t stopped him from going out and losing his books anyway, like plenty of others.
Fine, the idea can start slowly, losing books among friends and acquaintances. What makes it interesting is passing one to a stranger, and if possible watching the start of its trip from a distance, getting to know the person you’ve just formed a bond with through their bookshelf.
Livrarias Curitiba and its affiliates are also part of this tribe. They created a project called Passe Adiante and have spent three years losing books across the south of Brazil. I hope they keep the pace up, because it’s a good example for a private company and for the rest of us.
An imprisoned trip
All of this runs into the news about the best selling and least read books, where books are imprisoned in beautiful shelves, admired at length and never read. Those works will never have, win or accompany a trip.
I’ll admit I have imagined myself sitting in front of a fireplace in a good winter, in a room framed by an enormous shelf full of books. Better still if it were a shelf with a chair built into it.
All of this can be summed up by a short poem a colleague sent me, an admirer of books and wine, about the wise life being a book in your left hand and a glass in your right.
I’ll leave the wine aside though, wait until I’m sober and find a way to empty this shelf. Actually, I think the wine confused me. I don’t have a shelf. The books here have taken on a life of their own, and when they aren’t in the backpack they go wherever they like around the house, which must be a reflection of the desire to travel.
Thanks for the wings, and have a good trip
Books give wings to our imagination, and after the last page you have to give the wings back so they can carry on flying to new nests.
So I’ll do as you wish and ask to join this tribe. In a few days I’ll give the wings back to some books and set them free. I hope they travel well and always get their wings back.