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On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places

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Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places

#4
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.

Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places

#5
post #4

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 c…

Which one got a reply?

Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places

#6
post #4

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 c…

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 :-)

Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places

#7
post #5
post #4

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 c…

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.

Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places

#8
post #7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 somethi…

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...

Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places

#9
post #6
post #4

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 c…

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.

Re: On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places

#10
post #6
post #4

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 c…

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 :-)

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