Harriet Van Meter started the International Book Project in 1966.
When Mrs. Van Meter visited India in 1965, she found long lines of people waiting — not for food, but for books. She was so moved by her experience that upon returning home, she placed an advertisement in an English-language newspaper in India, offering to send books to those in need. She received a phenomenal response and started sending books from her basement. More »
The Chicago Public Library was reunited ... with a book so many years overdue no one even realized it was missing from its shelves.
In the midst of a rare, three-week amnesty program — where the nation's third-largest city's library system is forgiving fines for any overdue items that are returned to them — the library received a limited edition copy of Oscar Wilde's classic The Picture of Dorian Gray, Reuters reports. More »
In another case, the copy of Jean-Paul Sartre's Words given to "mummy" with the instructions that she "read it all without prejudice" appears to have been chosen with the cover artwork in mind, which bears the text "I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it". Ouch. More »
CDs, DVDS, and e-reads are all well and good when it comes to gift-giving at Christmas, but as far as I'm concerned, for sheer emotional wallop, the old-fashioned physical book is hard to beat. After all, it's the ideal opportunity to foist a well-loved novel onto someone who is now morally obliged to read the thing (and, indeed, profess to like it). Furthermore, there is generous scope / enough rope to let a carefully-chosen book speak volumes about how you feel about the receiver. For this reason, no book-as-gift is complete without a handwritten dedication on its inside cover to further make it clear, just in case there was any doubt, that the recipient absolutely MUST READ THIS BOOK AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL OTHERS!!! More »
