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Comment by KGIII | Hacker News Reader

On one of my trips, I bought a number of copies of a few books and left them in random places as I drove, more or less randomly, around the country.

I put an email address in each one, along with a quick note. I got exactly one response.

I left copies of:

Ishmael; Another Roadside Attraction; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence; Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Battle Cry

(the formatting kinda sucks)

A dozen copies of each, except Ishmael which I bought the half dozen I found at a bookstore along the way and added those to my random seeding of books.

I hope they were placed in the right places and at the right times, but I only got one reply so maybe not.

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Reminds me of http://bookcrossing.com which has been around for a while, lets you put an ID number in each book and then you can track it as others find it. I released a handful of books in NZ and London about 10 years ago via bookcrossing

That's become a worldwide movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BookCrossing

Yeah, I read about that later. I was actually later than that site but didn't know about a movement or anything.

I got the idea from having found a book in my youth. I wasn't sure if the book had been left or lost, but it was a good book and the finding of the book led me to enjoying science fiction.

I figured I'd try to make it more meaningful than that and left books that had influenced me. However, I got only one reply. I should do it again but make them gift certificates for the local bookstore. Then they can read what they want.

I travel light and love to read so I drop books off in public places naturally, had no idea it was a thing. Thanks!

JJ Abrams supposedly got inspired after finding a book that was left purposefully for someone else to find. He channeled that inspiration into a book titled "S." by Doug Dorst. I'm not a huge fiction reader but I have found the book really fascinating. It's presented as a fictional book called The Ship Of Thesus with notes in the margins from two people as they read it and passed it back and forth.

Toby Litt wrote a novel called Finding Myself where the book is presented as a diary account of a holiday with some friends of the fictional protagonist, but it includes notes from the editor of the character who has written the diary.

Been thinking of dropping off books to the local "neighborhood library" (one of those small unmanned stalls) but I'd been delinquent. You've given me the motivation to get around to it tomorrow; thx.

When I do that, I try to do the opposite of what it seems everyone else does. Namely, I try to give away the good books. It seems most want to keep the good books and give away the not so good books. I try to give away books that I'd want to read.

Yes this occurred to me as well. Luckily I have a few old beat up copies of good books like Catch22.

This is an interesting idea. I came across a copy of "When Harlie was One" in a geocache while backpacking once. I would have loved to contact the person who put it there to ask them what they were thinking :-)

Yeah, I tend to just get up and go on long journeys. I try to make them mean something more than just engaging in wanderlust. It has given me the chance to see the world and meet many, many people.

I wish I'd more replies from my book seeding but it serves to demonstrate that what I thought was sheer brilliance really wasn't seen as such by others. It's humbling but not without reward in and of itself.

Those were all books that had impacted me in some way. I left personalized notes in each one, as well as the email address. So, to answer what I was thinking, I was thinking that I'd share something that had been meaningful to me, in some vain hope of similitude. I guess it was more about the hope of a shared experience, even if remote and unknown.

Perhaps they just finished the book and didn't want to carry it about any more?

Not that I would ever do anything like that you understand...

Which one got a reply?

Ishmael. The reply was more about the note that I'd left than the book itself. Though, they thanked me for the book and felt that it'd be something they might appreciate later in life. They said that it was too deep for them and they weren't able to understand it all. I replied and told them that I'd read it multiple times, at different stages in life, and that I'd not fully understood it either - that I took something new away with each reading.

Well, I looked up some reviews on Ishmael because of this discussion, and it doesn't seem quite like what I'm looking for at the moment, but it did cause me to stumble onto "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" which I'm now thinking of picking up. I wonder if anyone here has opinions on it...

I'll say that Ishmael is something that is a bit different every time I read it. No, obviously the words are the same every time. But, each time, I take something different away.

I think that only the first time did I take away what the author intended. It's not the book that is what I always take away, but what I think about while reading the book. It's not just what it says, but what it doesn't say.

I don't even totally agree with the various conclusions and note some logical flaws. But, it inspires me to think, to be introspective, and to look at things a little differently than I had before.

I can't really review the book anymore. I probably could have reviewed it when I first read it. I might have been able to review it after each reading, but they'd have been different reviews every time.

Then again, I suppose this is a bit of a review...

I've been reading "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" recently; it's very good, especially if you enjoy mythology or heroic fiction in general. Not sure I agree with the psychoanalytic stuff in it, though.

Ishmael is well worth reading even if you aren't persuaded by it

I greatly enjoyed The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Reading it caused me to buy collections of folk tales from several different cultures.

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