Little Free Library

[hrj]

One of the projects I've been contemplating for a while that got rolled into The Grand Landscaping Project was setting up a Little Free Library in the angle between the driveaway and sidewalk. My contractor got all excited about making the library box as a miniature house in the style of my own house. Since I didn't have any specific vision for the object, I let him follow his inspiration. It's the one detail that has been completed since he resurfaced from ... well, things happened that weren't his fault and explain why he disappeared for about a month. So last weekend I put up a temporary "Little Free Library" inscription (I need to go over it in paint, but the words are there in Sharpie) and installed 8 books of diverse genres.

Since then, two books have found homes and one book has been left by a donor. Signs of life! My secret hope is that I'll discover a deep well of SFF readers that I can start feeding my stash to, but in the mean time I'm aiming for a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and at least one item aimed at younger readers.

Comments

[joycebre]

How fun!

[life_of_glamour]

That's so cool!

[alithea]

This is a lovely idea and something I may have to copy at some point, as I live off the high street and this town doesn't have a bookshop! (There are charity shops which sell secondhand books and the vegan refillery shop has a free library shelf too, but still, no bookshop! My 'retirement' plan might be to open one and sit in there with my dogs...)

[oracne]

Niiiiiiiiiiiice. There are a couple near me, one of them fairly elaborate, in memory of someone who lived in the house before the current owner.

[beanolc]

Very cool! They're common around my area; I love that Eugene has so many readers.

[trystbat]

Awesome! There's one around the corner from me that seems active.

[hrj]

It's a bit of a leap of faith. I get a lot of foot traffic past my house with a wide variety of backgrounds. I interact casually with a fair number of people when I"m doing yard work in the front, so I have a sense of who the potential audience might be. But you never know what's going to happen with a "public commons."

[hrj]

I didn't have an elaborate vision for the physical object, which was nice because it allowed my contractor to indulge his artistry. (We had a lot of conversations about my vision versus his vision on certain details of other parts of the job.)

[hrj]

I suspect it's the sort of thing where one inspires others.

[hrj]

I once found a website that lists LFL locations -- I should track it down and add mine. There's a LFL by one of the houses next to the rec path I bike on, but I've never stopped to check it out because it's in the middle of one of the very few slopes on the path so it isn't a convenient place to stop a bike.

[oracne]

That sounds so beautiful.

[cellio]

Sounds like fun! Can we see a picture of your customized LFL? (The ones in my neighborhood are all the basic type that I think started out as kits.)

[hrj]

I finally did my video tour of the yard improvements, which is currently uploading to YouTube. I'll post a link in my blog.