For more than a decade, Hernando Guanlao, of Manila, has run the Fight Club of reading out of his home library. The BBC reports:
The idea is simple. Readers can take as many books as they want, for as long as they want — even permanently. As Guanlao says: “The only rule is that there are no rules.”
He started with 100 books, which he stuck outside his door with an open invitation to borrow. Now he has more than 2,000 or so books. People certainly must keep one they like or forget to bring them back. But they also donate new ones and bring back plenty of the ones they borrow.
Now, Guanlao’s trying to expand. And although a public library run out of your home is a great idea, I am even more in love with the idea of the free, floating library his friend wants to start:
She wants to set up a “book boat”, travelling around the islands of Sulu and Basilan — an area better known as a hideout for separatist rebels than for any great access to literature.
There’s something so magical-realist about a book boat that it feels almost like it’s destined to sink. Or run aground on a deserted island, where its crew is destined to live out their days reading the same books over and over again. Or maybe just give people who don’t normally have a chance to read a chance to read.
