The project probably had its beginnings a few years ago but like most inspirations the moment of recognition didn't come until it was ready. Again unlike other "ah ha" moments the idea didn't present itself while I was sitting in the bath tub or formulated on the back of a napkin in a bar although a bar does play a role later on as you will see. In fact the notion came to me in, of all places, a laundromat in Copenhagen, Denmark late August 2009. I was in Copenhagen to assist our oldest daughter while she got settled into her apartment and prepared for an educational exchange program with the University of Copenhagen. As is it is my habit to do I bring along a couple of books to read and once I finish reading them I will leave them in the hotel library or just leave them in a public place for someone to pick up and enjoy. Never once giving thought to what became of them once I had disposed of the text. On this day I happened to be in a laundromat not far from my hotel and had just dropped a book on one of the folding tables when this guy walks in strides over to the table where the book is resting its weary pages, picks it up and while casually turning it over in his hands remarks that he would like to take it home to read. I, playing dumb, which comes naturally, told him I recognized that book and it was a good read. He looked at me and opined about what he should do when he was finished reading the tome and how nice it would be to talk to others who had found books under similar circumstances. I said that he should just leave it somewhere for someone else to read. And yes there it was! the eureka moment had arrived. I found myself in a cartoon with the light bulb shining brightly over my head. Here I had been leaving books all over the world not realizing that I and I'm sure others had been contributing to the reading enjoyment of so many people and not bothered to follow up on the experiences that these adopters had had with the books they had found.
So now that my inquisitive mind had been awakened I decided to create a way in which I could explore a number of ideas. First, I wanted to find a way to follow these books as they passed from person to person. Second, I wanted to create a greater awareness of the value of reading. Third, I wanted to encourage the development of a global community of like minded individuals committed to sharing their ideas about reading in general, and lastly to satisfy my dormant academic interest in the impact, if any, of such a project. To address all four concerns my first and only thought was to create a fairly elaborate web site with all sorts of links and mechanisms for tracking the books, creating discussion groups etc. Upon investigation of developing such a site it became painfully aware that I had fallen into an old familiar trap of allowing the technology to determine outcomes as opposed to the users, in this case all the participants in the project, fully engaging themselves in the process and let the outcomes evolve from their participation. So with this in mind I scrapped the idea of a complex and expensive web site and decided upon a more intimate mode of running this project.
So what you have before you, I hope, is just the beginning of a project that will build upon its participants and their contributions as time moves on. How is this blog going to address the four ideas outlined above? To satisfy the first idea I simply created a sticker which I have placed either on the cover or on the inside of the cover of the book. The sticker asks that whoever finds the book e-mail back some information on when and where it was found and then the same information when it is left for someone else to find. So if you happen to run across a book with a large sticker with an owl reading a book stuck to a book in the top left hand corner please follow the instructions. To get the project rolling, and this is where the bar makes its entrance into this story, I invited some friends out for an evening of music and beers at a local tavern. Some close friends of ours were in town for the Christmas holidays making it easier to get others to the bar to visit with our out of town pals. During the evening I enlisted my friends from out of town and one other local to be my first emissaries to deliver six books that I extracted from my personal library. Hobo books would soon be tramping across the world and in no time I'll be receiving e-mails with information to pass on to the readers of this blog. Thanks go out to Rick, Penny and their son Dan as they will, on their way back to the U.S.A. be depositing five of the six books in as of yet undisclosed locations. Thanks to Steve who will leave a book somewhere in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where this project has its beginnings.
To look after ideas two and three I would not only talk about the travels of our orphaned hobo books but also create a dialogue around the value of reading. It is my firm belief that we are witnessing a slow erosion of reading skills and the attendant positive outcomes associated with reading such as creative thinking and critical analysis. We seemed to have ceded control of our interpretive world to technology that produces images and short bursts of text to explain the world around us resulting in a dependence on these visuals produced by others rather than words which we interpret in our own way. However naive this may sound I think that reading can mitigate the effects of the tyranny of technology and the culture of consumerism. These are just a couple thoughts I would like to see explored through this blog and associated discussion groups. To satisfy my academic interest I will be conducting various qualitative and quantitative analysis on the project merely for my own curiosity. I will respect anyones wishes to remain anonymous and will gladly share my results, if any, with whomever asks. Rest assured there is no hidden agenda associated with this blog.
Finally, I need to explain my blog name. You will notice over at the side I will be using the name Duck Lyng for writing these posts. This obvious pseudonym was created simply to inject a little humour into the site. Anyone from Calgary whom I grew up with will know who I am so it's kind of an inside joke. However fictitious the name is it has its roots in reality with those who gave the nickname to me way back in the late sixties. So bare with me while I have little fun with the name. With that out of the way I now await our first communication from one our temporary guardians. I suspect this may take a few days since the books will not be left to their own devices until New Years day. Check back in early January when I should have my profile completed and hopefully some news about our wayward transient texts. That's all for now see you soon. I have since decided to use my real name.
Alan Montgomery
