ghost books

We were walking fast because we had a bus to catch. Then we started finding books. Books propped in doorways, books reclining on benches where the homeless sleep. The books were in plastic bags against the rain. It was raining a little. My son picked one up. It was Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars. I thought, WHAT?

So there is this initiative in Madrid to get people reading and passing books around - or at least just passing books around. It's sponsored by a beer company. A children's charity is somehow involved. There's a webpage. I haven't looked at it. When you find a book you're supposed to go to the webpage and say where you found it (each book has a number) and after you read it you're supposed to (this is where things get a little weird) leave it somewhere, anywhere you want, for someone else to find. I don't know. I have the feeling that people who normally read books will read them and leave them somewhere, maybe even do the numbers thing on the webpage, but that people who don't normally read will take them and keep them. Why would I think that? What's a book to someone who never reads? (Maybe I've discovered an unusual paranoia in myself. Non-readers will take the books. Strange.) But as you walk down the street now you find books. They're just sitting there. It's like walking through a forest and finding mushrooms - these bizzare, kind of magical apparitions, the fruit of an underground world.

As we hurried for the bus (we always miss the bus by one minute or less) it seemed like almost everyone was carrying a book or two. Strangers were showing them to each other, holding them out, smiling at them. It was like the books were something besides books. They laughed at these things in their hands like they couldn't believe it. They turned them around and around. I was probably doing the same thing. I saw a woman smelling one. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I'm making that part up. Now I'm not even sure. But I'm sure that people like finding things. And we also like getting something for nothing. For a moment, though, it felt like these book apparitions were changing the whole city. I was living in a city overrun by - haunted by - infected with - books. They were pushing up out of the wet ground like mushrooms. They were growing on stairs and telephone booths and park benches. Then we got on the bus (which didn't leave one minute early for a change) and read.