
On the pleasures of stumbling upon books in the wrong places - diodorus
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/10/17/happy-accidents/
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noufalibrahim
There's a street in Bangalore where people sell old books by weight[1].
Usually, it's full of old cheap textbooks sold off by students, outdated
magazines (like Readers Digest) and such. I spent a cool day walking through,
random sampling the piles of books and found a copy of PG's On Lisp in mint
condition.

[1]
[https://www.google.co.in/search?tbm=isch&q=avenue+road+Banga...](https://www.google.co.in/search?tbm=isch&q=avenue+road+Bangalore&tbs=imgo:1&gws_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=exDnWfyuB4jivASxrp3QBQ)

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vadansky
I found a battered copy of 1984 in a school hallway once. At the time I hate
books because I mostly read the ones we were taught in English class, which
were mostly Hardy Boy-esque type books so I all books were like that. After
reading 1984 I realized what books actually were and I've been an avid reader
since then. I have a bookshelf filled with books, and then when I run out of
space I'm filling up the floor around it with books. And I still have that
worn copy of 1984.

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KGIII
On one of my trips, I bought a number of copies of a few books and left them
in random places as I drove, more or less randomly, around the country.

I put an email address in each one, along with a quick note. I got exactly one
response.

I left copies of:

Ishmael; Another Roadside Attraction; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintanence; Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Battle Cry

(the formatting kinda sucks)

A dozen copies of each, except Ishmael which I bought the half dozen I found
at a bookstore along the way and added those to my random seeding of books.

I hope they were placed in the right places and at the right times, but I only
got one reply so maybe not.

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ChuckMcM
This is an interesting idea. I came across a copy of "When Harlie was One" in
a geocache while backpacking once. I would have loved to contact the person
who put it there to ask them what they were thinking :-)

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KGIII
Yeah, I tend to just get up and go on long journeys. I try to make them mean
something more than just engaging in wanderlust. It has given me the chance to
see the world and meet many, many people.

I wish I'd more replies from my book seeding but it serves to demonstrate that
what I thought was sheer brilliance really wasn't seen as such by others. It's
humbling but not without reward in and of itself.

Those were all books that had impacted me in some way. I left personalized
notes in each one, as well as the email address. So, to answer what I was
thinking, I was thinking that I'd share something that had been meaningful to
me, in some vain hope of similitude. I guess it was more about the hope of a
shared experience, even if remote and unknown.

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Lu53r
I found an old SciFi anthology book as an early teen, I think in a bargain
bucket at a Woolworths, called "Adventures in Tomorrow" it contained various
short stories set at varying eras in the future, many by authors who went on
to be quite famous... I mentioned this to my wife when I was 50 and she found
an original hardback for pennies on Amazon Marketplace and it has re-kindled
an enjoyment of fantasy writing that I had all but forgotten due to my
incessant reading of manuals and factual texts... I must put aside more time
for reading purely for enjoyment!

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musage
I once found Hannah Arendt's "Ursprünge und Elemente totalitärer Herrschaft"
in the street (in a small box with books). With newspaper clippings about her
between the back pages... a book I had been meaning and then forgetting to
read for 1-2 years before that. I still don't know whether I am more shocked
that I found it or that someone put it in the street like that. But since then
I always examine such boxes of books, and I'm finding more books I find
interesting than I have time to read. I just love the randomness of it.

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denalilumma
This just happened to me yesterday, at the library. I was walking around, not
looking for anything in particular. I found the most amazing book and read
through almost half of it before I ordered it on amazon and a few others by
the same author. I also vowed to donate money to the library when I'm rich.

~~~
dwolfson
What was the book?

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TuringNYC
I'm a book-lover and have a wall full of books i've collected over 25+yrs. Yet
all I could think of reading this -- Breaking Bad.

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vonnik
A diary entry published in the Paris Review. There's not much about books
there, but there is a whole lot of I.

~~~
qntty
It's a blog post

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vonnik
It's the story of one person who found one book, which is very different and
much less interesting than the title suggests.

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mrlyc
Librarian here. There is no pleasure of stumbling upon a book in the wrong
place.

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Aissen
As a _library user_ it's a pet peeve of mine. If I ever see a book in wrong
place, I just put it back where it belongs. There's noting more infuriating
than not finding a book and knowing it's somewhere in there.

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Mediterraneo10
> If I ever see a book in wrong place, I just put it back where it belongs.

A lot of university libraries clearly instruct users not to put books back
after taking them off the shelf, because in putting it back "in the right
place", they often get it wrong. Instead, one should put it in a designated
place for the library staff to shelve it instead.

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yuubi
Some libraries supposedly collect statistics on books used in the building,
measured by counting books in the to-be-reshelved area, for use when lobbying
for funding.

