Set a book free

If you love a book, set it free. That's the philosophy behind a new movement to leave books in unexpected locations. People who stumble across the books can read them and then pass them on.

With the Internet, you can even set a book loose and then track its movements across town or even around the world.

The Ashland Public Library is doing just that. Branch manager Amy Blossom and other librarians set 50 copies of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" free throughout Jackson County. In Ashland, she left copies at Lithia Park, a coffee shop, the Ashland Family YMCA, The Bricks at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and other popular spots.

The books have a sticker to let people know they can register their find at BookCrossing.com.

"We can follow them," Blossom said. "The stickers are in different languages because who knows where they'll end up."

She's checked the BookCrossing.com Web site and already found messages from Jackson County residents who have discovered the books.

"One person said, 'This is such an important book. It should be passed on to everybody,'" Blossom recalled.

Jackson County's libraries also have hundreds of copies of "Fahrenheit 451" that residents can check out this month as part of "Jackson County Reads."

Multiple events are planned for people to discuss and learn more about Bradbury's classic.

You don't have to be a librarian to register a book on BookCrossing.com and then track its travels. The Web site states you can register a book in less than a minute. Blossom agreed that the registration process is simple.

BookCrossing.com states that, so far, 660,040 people in 130 countries have come to the Web site to share their passion for books and to take part in "bookcrossing," which is "the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise."

Releasing a book is simple.

"Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation," BookCrossing.com suggests. "Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym — anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel next. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person."

Blossom said when she left a book at Lithia Park, she did put it inside a plastic bag to protect it from the weather. She expects the "Fahrenheit 451" books released in Jackson County to spread well beyond the local area.

Librarians got 56 copies of the book for free from a New York library. The six that weren't let loose around the county were given to a jail, she said.

It sounds so easy and fun, I'm thinking of giving it a try.

So watch out, books on my shelves. I love you all, but one of you is going to be set free.