But I’m not a book pig. I share. My friends know the look — a wild-eye stare, book thrust in front of me. “You got to read this. Right now.”

Book Crossing is a free Internet service for people like me who love to share books. Here’s how it works.

First, you register a book with Book Crossing. Any book. You can enter the ISBN and it will look the book up for you, or you can enter the title, author and category manually. You rate the book on a scale of 1-10 or indicate that you haven’t read it. You can make a journal entry about the book. Click a button, and your book is assigned a unique code, something like 637-560614. This counts as registering a book.

Next step: print out a label or a bookmark. The labels are designed to print 10-up on Avery 5163 or 5263 peel-n-stick label sheets, or you can print them on plain paper and glue them in the book. Bookmarks can be loosely inserted. Low-tech people can handwrite the message in the inside cover. The label informs the person finding the book that it is a free book and encourages them to record their find on the Book Crossing Web site. It’s like giving your book a passport.

This done, you release the book into the wild: drop it off in a public place for someone to find. As I am writing this article, 97,732 people have registered with the site and have released 276,372 books into the wild. 3,622 have been released in Texas; 236 in San Antonio. To make the book count as a released book you need to fill out a short form describing where you left the book. Savvy Book Crossers say that putting a post-it note on the cover that advertises “free book – look inside!” improves the odds of the book being picked up.

If someone finds your book and reports the find back to Book Crossing, you get an e-mail reporting the find. The finder can also make a journal entry about the book and is encouraged to re-release the book. That’s it in a nutshell.

So what’s the point? Adventure. Sharing. The thrill of the chase, the joy of the hunt. It’s a little bit subversive, a little bit altruistic. Part sociology experiment and part scavenger hunt. Co-founder Ron Hornbeck says his intention was to “turn the whole world into a lending library.”

There are some refinements in that make it even more intriguing. When you release a book you can complete a short release report describing where the book has been dropped. Here are some recent releases into the wilds of San Antonio: 

• Hertz counter at airport
• Holiday Inn, Durango & Santa Rosa
• Whole Foods Mkt. @ The Quarry
• Scobee Elementary School
• Lackland AFB
• Twin Sisters Restaurant
• University of Incarnate Word
• Whataburger at San Pedro and Ramsey
• University Hospital, Labor and Delivery waiting room
• Burlington Coat Factory 281/Bitters
• Witte Museum
• Fantastic Sam's Haircutters at Huebner & Babcock
• Women's restroom at Hwy 281 Wal-Mart
• Alamo Plaza
• HEB on Nacogdoches, on top of the HEBuddy machine

Public places can become “Official Book Crossing Zones.” I’m going to recommend this to my friend Patsy Asher, owner of Remember the Alibi Mystery Bookstore, now at the corner of West Ave. and Lockhill-Selma. All she would have to do is offer a small space for people to drop books. She could even leave some herself — she has a lot of used books she took as trade-ins. Book Crossing has a small sign she can use to mark the space. She would get listed on the Book Crossing site as an official zone and each registered book would appear on the San Antonio list. It’s a free service that could help bring more customers to her store. Hey — Alamo PC could do this at the Learning Center!

Some people use Book Crossing to trade books with friends. There are forums, chat rooms and an e-mail list that you can join to interact with other Book Crossers, share tips and even start book discussion groups. People can maintain wish lists and trade books with friends all over the world. There are book crossers everywhere, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe.

The most prolific Book Crosser is Harriet Klausner from Morrow, Georgia. Since she joined the site two years ago she has registered 3,145 books.

Greg and Katie Williden are San Antonio Book Crossing fans who go under the joint screen name “Kategory.” Greg told me: 

Vijaycee is another San Antonian, now in grad school in New York City: 

The most widely traveled book is A ogni piP so-spinto..., by Michele Pernozzoli, which has passed through 25 hands in Italy. The most popular English language release has been Sue Grafton’s A is for Alibi, which started out in Lafayette, IN on July 19, 2002 and by last month had wandered through Bellingham, WA, San Francisco, Houston, Alexandria, VA Kingston, Ontario, Bountiful, UT, Charleston, WVA and at last sighting was in Sherman Oaks, CA.

CJ is a San Antonio homemaker, mother of six and grandmother of one who uses the screen name Utag72. She said: 

I’ve released a few books so far but haven’t caught one yet. If you catch a book in the wild, pick it up, log it in and pass it on! If your own bookshelves need thinning, Book Crossing is a fun way to give old books a new life. And if you hang around the Alamo PC Learning Center at Crossroads Mall, keep your eyes peeled. A free book may cross your path.