Synchronicity and the joy of a new book

How did you find the last book you read? Maybe a recommendation from a friend? Or a search on an online store like Amazon? Or maybe you were walking the aisles at a bookstore. Whatever it was, chances are it wasn't in a random place that isn't dedicated to books or from a person you don't know. But it could be if you like the idea of an unknown adventure with your books.

Enter BookCrossing.com, a way for you to share books you love with a loosely connected online community of hundreds of thousands of readers around the world.

I learned about it in the comments after my post about the Goodreads Giveaways, when Erika B. asked if I had heard of BookCrossing.com. I had not, but it's a pretty amazing option - especially for those of us who are into scavenger hunts.

Here's how they describe themselves:

We are a community of book lovers who enjoy sharing our books with others. It's a simple process of adding a BookCrossing label to your books and then “releasing” them into the wild. And logging in here to see who finds them and where in the world they end up. It's fun and exciting to “follow” your books as they travel around the world and take on a life of their own. Who know where they'll go and who will find them and return here to enter the ID from your labels...

In essence, you take a book you want to pass on and log it in their system, then keep track as it travels. You can login with Twitter, Facebook or even Goodreads, so the scavenger hunt is well-connected. In fact, when I signed up the site told me: "You're about to join over 1,762,706 other book lovers from all over the world..."  so you're in good company. 

I'll be sending my first book out into the world of BookCrossing soon- what do you think? Will you try it?