Little Free Library on the bicycle trail
It looks like a dollhouse on a stick.
This Little Free Library is dubbed “General Store.” Pull the handle on the side and the wall opens to reveal a shelf of free books.
Such libraries have sprung up all over my neighborhood. Some are excellent, others seem to be junk drop-offs.
The Little Free Library movement started in 2009 in Hudson, Wisconsin, when Todd Bol built a bookcase that looked like a a one-room schoolhouse. He put it in his yard with a sign that said “Free Book Exchange.” The signs now say, “Take a book. Leave a book.”
It caught on. There are now 25,000 Little Free Libraries in the U.S. and in 40 other countries. You can buy a kit from the website, or build your own.
We recently dropped off some books at the Little Free Library: “good reading copies” of The Raj Quartet, Nostromo, and The Ambassadors.
And today I dropped off more books. Do you think anyone will want my old copies of Emma, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Five Short Novels by Turgenev, or Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End? (I’ve replaced them with nicer copies.) Perhaps there’s hope for Emma and Parade’s End because of the BBC.
I doubt that the B.S. Johnson omnibus will go–I wasn’t wild about it myself–but someone may want Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum.
I don’t know if people want to read the classics.
Maybe people prefer the other books. This is what was there. Not much!
You gave them some great titles. I hope you have read The Raj Quartet yourself. If not, retrieve and read.
Yes, I absolutey loved it!
If I was choosing, I would choose from your books! And I wish this would take off over here – I could supply quite a big one single handed (and that’s after donating four large boxes of books yesterday! 🙂
I have to laugh! Yes, you could stock several Little Free Libraries. One of them, by the way , is designed to look like a British phone booth.
I’m halfway through the Raj quartet, which I’m borrowing from my regular, not-adorable library. It will be a lucky find for someone!
Paul Scott is so good! I read another book by him that I loved, Staying On. Not-adorable libraries do have more books than the LFLS.:)
What a wonderful idea! Residents in a village near us set up a library in an old red phone box, which is a similar idea.
That sounds like exactly the same thing! It is so nice that people want to share their books.