But with only 50 people turning up at the last flash-mob it's almost certainly just a flash in the pan.
So now we have 'Bookcrossing' - this latest internet fad is turning the humble book club into one giant global reading group, as Lucy Johnson explains.
You have probably left a book behind in a cafe before. But have you ever left a book behind on purpose?
It may sound eccentrically altruistic but you may soon find yourself stumbling over a free book, because bookcrossing - as it is known - is coming to a public space near you.
So what do you do if you find one? Well inside the book you'll find a note telling you to log onto a website address, and enter the book's reference number.
That way you can find out where the book came from, who read it and just what they thought of it. Then when you have finished it, you simply leave it for someone else.
It's the ultimate in travel literature. The book you pick up may have started its journey in a Starbucks in Singapore, landed in a bus stop in Beijing, spent time on a park bench in Prague and then travelled to a cafe in Camden.
Greg Rowland, of The Idler counter-culture magazine, says of the phenomenon: "I think we're increasingly atomised in current society and that these kind of network activities are a cry for some sort of old-fashioned need for a community, not goegroaphical but of common interest, networking for its own sake."
Like so many cultural phenomena this one started in the States.
Ron Hornbaker, a thirty-something software developer, glanced at his bookshelf and hit on an idea. Why not turn the world into one giant library?
That was in 2001 and there are now half a million books in circulation with an impressive global reach.
In a snapshot of roaming books on one day this week, Britain had nearly 8000 books waiting to be found. But books popped up in the unlikeliest places: three had been released in Bolivia, 13 in Afghanistan, one in Papua New Guinea and 79 in Iran - including one potentially inflammatory tome: The Plebians Rehearse the Uprising. Revolutionary stuff one would think.
Stephen Bayley, cultural commentator, said: "I think there's a huge liberal, libertarian element behind this and remember the former Soviet Union was bought down by the fax machine, information is the most powerful weapon of all.
"We all know that the pen is much much mightier than the sword and book crossing has the potential for that. I love the idea of the bandit activity, you could secrete certain irreverent books in a certain community and just watch them fly."
Publicity on this scale is beyond the wildest dreams of most bookshops and cynics suggest it can do Ron Hornbaker's software development company no harm. But there's undoubtedly a romance about setting a book free and voyeuristically letting fate and the Internet do the rest. So should the publishing world be worried?
Stephen Bayley said: "It changes the whole structure of the publishing business which is by and large very conservative, patriarchal and slow to react. The whole dynamic is being changed from the publisher pushing stuff onto the public and now we have fantasctic scope to do guerrilla self-publishing. If its a success it will grow."
So much for the Internet spelling the end of books. But what does all this tell us about our modern culture?
Greg Rowland thinks it might be disillusionment with political institutions. "But its an empty gesture, people want to connect but for no other reason than pure connectivity."
But remember, if do want to set your books free, in our post September 11 world some sites are not recommended. Airports and planes, according to the website, make poor choices of venue: your book is as likely to get blown up as it is to get read.
|
