Little free libraries
Throughout my neighborhood, every few blocks, tiny little houses filled with books stand in front of homes, facing the sidewalk. Anyone is welcome to open their glass doors, take or leave a book. Somebody—most likely the homeowner--who has installed the little libraries replaces books that have not found takers now and then, making room for others.
I saw the first these tiny free libraries several years ago in Arcata, home of Humboldt State University, and was enchanted. Since then uncounted numbers of them have appeared in American cities and towns. At a time when it’s rare to see anyone walking along the street without something plugged into their ears, head bent over a cell phone, these little book houses bear witness to a desire to reach out to strangers and a wish to share.
Before they appeared, people would put boxes of books they no longer wanted out on the street. I was sometimes shocked to see piles of books simply dumped on a sidewalk, abandoned, even left in the rain. Some, to be sure, were of little worth—various obsolete texts, children’s books with crayon scribblings inside, run-of-the-mill self-improvement manuals. But I also found some good literature, history, and poetry, which I gladly took home with me. Having grown up to respect books, so see them treated as trash upset me.
I used to take books I was ready to part with to second-hand book shops, for credit, and so did my daughter and grandson when they were children. But very few used book shops are still in business in our city, and those that remain –none in my neighborhood, although it seems to be teeming with authors--are so selective that I decided it’s not worth lugging stacks of books to them only to have almost everything rejected.
In garage sales, books do poorly. Some thrift shops carry books, but thrift shops too have become scarce in San Francisco, where rents are the highest in the country. Extensive home libraries are no longer status symbols. Public libraries lack shelf space, most donated volumes are disposed of at gigantic sales, or may be recycled with old newspapers and magazines.
As a person who has made her way through life by arranging words on paper, I was plunged into gloom by thoughts of the future of books. But then the little free libraries began to appear. Now, as I leave home for my daily walks, I choose my route so as to include at least one of them. My favorite, several blocks away, often has books in French and German, which I speak and read. Once I was astonished to find a novel in Lithuanian, translated from English. Someone guessed another Lithuanian would come by and find it. And someone did. I know no one from my native land who lives in the vicinity. I took the book and have passed it on.
I’m sorry to have to report that this particular mini-library was vandalized. It was unique in being housed in a handsome metal and glass cabinet rather than a miniature wooden house. When I went by a while back I saw a big cardboard sign calling for its return, and a paper pad and pen, inviting suggestions on where it might have gone. The suggestions were playful, good-humored. Perhaps it flew away, someone suggested, remembering seeing a children’s book titled Little Dieter Wants to Fly. An open bookshelf stood where the cabinet had been—not safe for books in fog and the hoped-for rain. “I have a cabinet of mahogany and glass and will be glad to bring it by,” I read in another note, “if someone will install it.”
At this time when we are torn apart as a society, these little book houses give me hope that goodwill can prevail.