Technology & MSG

I like books. I like reading. My grandmother would be proud of me. She owned a lot of books. Tens of thousands of them. They filled an entire room, spilling over onto the stairs in her New Jersey home. She would routinely give books as presents as I was growing up. For decades she bought new and used books — from all manner of bookstores, second hand shops, yard sales, and flea markets — like they were going out of style. In a way — thanks to the Internet and modern media — she was right. Right as she may have been, I do not think this is a good thing.

In Baltimore there’s a place called The Book Thing. Their mission is simple: “to put unwanted books into the hands of those who want them.” Think of it like a public library, except they receive no public money. And there’s no membership card or due dates on any of the materials. There’s no practical limit on how many you can take. There’s no cost to anyone. You just show up on Saturday or Sunday from 9am-6pm, find books you like and take them home. That’s it.

Free books for all, without strings. Okay, there’s one. The books are marked with a “not for re-sale” stamp.

It’s such a foreign concept. This day in age it seems like everyone has an angle, so for an organization to fight to pay the bills to run the place to effectively better people strikes me as flabbergasting and amazing. But in the eyes of founder Russell Wattenberg, it’s simple. He hated the thought of books sitting unused on people’s shelves or basements never to be read again when there were so many people in Baltimore who couldn’t afford new books or didn’t have access to used books. This isn’t a for-profit endeavor. The Book Thing sells “fewer than .002% of the books” to meet ends meet, including electricity, rent, and other overhead costs. I doubt there’s any salaried employees but volunteers are always welcome.

The building itself is a nondescript warehouse in the 3000 block of Vineyard Lane in Waverly. From what used to be a garage door in the front, boxes of books are dropped off by residents to be sorted and placed on the shelves. When you walk in the front or back door there’s a small desk that has plastic bags to use while you’re there, to better collect and carry your books. On that desk there is a clipboard with paper and pen, to provide the following non-personal information: date, first name, number of books taken, and optional comment. There’s also a wall of photos that people have left in the books that they’ve donated.

Inside the floors are mixture of cracked linoleum and bare concrete. There are water stains on the ceiling tiles but the air is pretty dry considering how humid it was outside. The luxuries of air conditioning are those afforded to book vendors making a profit, so dress lightly in the summer (though presumably there is heating in the winter). As you might expect, the smell of old books permeates the warm air. This is a different smell than a library with it’s plastic book covers and carpets cleaned with industrial chemicals. Here it’s a deliciously musty mix of aging paper and an old building. Though not a library, people still speak in hushed tones.

There are books everywhere. The walls of four rooms are covered from floor to my arm’s reach height with book shelves. There are freestanding bookshelves adorned with more books. On the walls that are only finished on one side there are shelves built between the wall studs, using the drywall as the backing. There are crates and large plastic tubs on the floor with books and magazines piled into them.

The books are organized, but loosely by subject. There are maps of the building available, similar to the paper maps you can get when you go to IKEA. A book may be in the fiction section, but other than that there’s no Dewey decimal system or alphabetic sorting to be had. I definitely wouldn’t go there in hopes of finding a specific title, but discovering a book that you think you’ll enjoy is part of the fun. I think I could have spent the day there looking through the shelves, but I was getting a little warm. I decided on three hardcover books.

• Prevention’s Cooking for Good Health
• Michael Crichton’s Airframe
• Jeff Smith’s The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine

The cookbooks look really good and I hope to get some ideas out of them. I read Airframe many years ago, but I remember enjoying it and would like to read it again. Plus, it gives me incentive to come back to return it so that someone else can enjoy it. I just discovered that there were two family photos tucked into the rear book flap, so I’ll have to return those to the wall as well.

I can’t get over what a cool thing it is. It’s such a neat place, I can’t help but smile.

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Tags: baltimore, books, free, literacy