A few days ago my Uncle boarded a train in Cardiff.  Taking his seat, he found a book on the table in front of him.  The book, Royal Murders: Hatred, Revenge and the Seizing of Power, had a small Post-it note attached to the front reading “I’m free.  Look inside!”.

A peek at the inside front cover revealed a rather intriguing arrangement.  The book had been left on the train as part of Book Crossing, a system that combines the Web 2.0 concepts of sharing and socialising online with the very much Web 0.0 concept of reading books – proper books, made out of paper and printed with ink.  We’ll have no Kindles here, thank you!

The idea behind Book Crossing is that once you’ve read a book you register it with the site along with a short review.  You stick a label featuring its unique reference number inside the front cover and then you simply leave the book somewhere public.  Someone else then picks up the book, reads it, reviews it and leaves it for a third person to discover, and so on.  After a few months each book should have a string of reader reviews along with descriptions of where each person found and left the book.

My Uncle’s book had only recently begun its journey.  Having been first read and left in Bristol, its second reader left it on a train in Newport, Gwent.  The train then traveled onto Cardiff where it was found by my Uncle.  You can imagine that each book registered with Book Crossing will, over time, develop its own community of readers with a unique bond – they’ve each read exactly the copy of the book.  The journey of each book across the country, or indeed the world, will be fascinating too.

I like Book Crossing.  It combines the interactive and community aspects of the web with a tangible, real world experience.  I was surprised to see it’s been running since 2001.  I can’t imagine it makes a huge amount of money.  Membership is free, although there’s a paid ‘Members Plus’ scheme and a shop selling books and T-shirts.  That said, it’s a fantastic idea and one that deserves to go from strength.

So, if you find a book sat on a train in the near future it may well be me who left it there!