I’m in the middle of a week-long stay in New York City right now, and as I am depending on the kindness of several very dear and very generous friends to house me during my stay, I am carrying my shoulder bags with me quite a bit. This means said shoulder bags must be as light as possible. Thank goodness for travel sizes of things like toothpaste and antiperspirant! (My friends say that, too…)
Thank goodness, too, for ebooks – but on the kinds of travels I take, books pop up constantly. I went to Victor Lodato’s book party and could not resist buying and having him sign a copy of his new novel Mathilda Savitch (FSG).I met with a dear old friend who is working as an outside PR on a book and allowed her to press one upon me. I passed a small bookshop in Brooklyn that had a truly elegant architectural history of Castle Howard…well, you see how I am.
Some of these books can be shipped home. However, occasionally a book must simply be…left behind. One pal told me to take a galley of a new graphic novel that he’d enjoyed. I liked it a lot, but it’s a galley and not something I wanted to tote around the city. I left it on the seat of the subway (first having blacked out the publicist’s name and email and phone number, a professional courtesy!) and here’s the thing: I love imagining who might pick it up.
Yes, I know there are groups out there like Book Crossing in which people “mark” titles and deliberately leave them to be found and read and returned “to the wild.” Book Crossing (I’m sure there are others) is a great idea, but I don’t really have the time or organizational skills to cope with it. When I do finish a book and leave it somewhere (it might be the subway, a park, a café…), I hope that it finds another reader, and that’s about it.
But what about you? Do you ever leave books behind? If so, do you simply abandon them, or do you mark them in some way?
