bookchain

A few years ago, I was dating a girl that had received a book from her friend that had been passed from person-to-person about a dozen times, with each person whose hands it had passed through signing the inside of the back cover as proof that they had read it. Thinking this was an awesome idea that needed a bit of improving, I hatched an idea that I called Bookchain.

The idea is essentially the same as the one that inspired it, only with a few slight modifications. Theoretically, I would release a small number of the same book into the wild, each with a typed list of instructions on the inside cover requesting that every person whose hands the book passed through email me with certain details like their name, location, the dates they received it and gave it away, and their opinion of the book. Photos of it in geologically relevant places would be nice, but obviously not a requirement. If anything were to happen to the book that changes its appearance in any major way (such as someone highlighting a favorite passage, writing a note or spilling coffee on the dust jacket), I would also appreciate mention of this as well. After a certain number of people (dictated by the number of signature spaces on the back cover, like the original), the last person sends me the book back so that a new "round" may be started with a different series of books. All of this would be recorded on a blog, tracking the multiple (individually numbered) books at once. In my mind, it would turn into something larger than this, a sort of literary take on the "Where's George?" phenomenon with dozens and dozens of books being tracked and started across the country at all times.

Perhaps a bit overzealously, I ran out and bought a single book for just this purpose and did everything described above about a week after I'd planned it. My articulately worded instructions soon adorned the inside of the cover of my favorite novel ever written, Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I sent it to a close friend of mine. She gave it to someone else, they gave it to another person, they gave it to another, and it vanished. The journey stopped dead, and I stopped getting emails about it.

Disheartened, I abandoned the idea until I found an old journal outlining the rules a few weeks ago. It dawned on me that with the even further advent of the internet in the five years or so since I'd first made my attempt at tracking books, I should at least give it a second thought.

This isn't something I can do alone, though. I'm still a little burned from my last failure all those years ago and need a small dedicated group of people to help me get this idea off the ground. If you are reading this and are interested in being one of the few people that starts the first ever "real" round of Bookchain, I'd like to invite you to email me at bookchainblog@gmail.com with a short bit about you, where you live and your suggestion(s) for a book that you think I should use for this. Depending on the level of interest, I plan to ship out all of the books no later than January 1st, 2013.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon.