BookCrossing

Set up by IT executive Ron Hornbaker in 2001 as a community project, this site is an imaginative extension of the reading group idea and now has participating members across the world from the United States to Malaysia.

The concept is simple and the process easy, as long as you can bear to part with your books. If you have enjoyed a particular novel or work of history and want to share it with others, sign up to BookCrossing, register your book and print off a BookCrossing label. Attach the label to your tome then release it ‘into the wild' by leaving it at a bus stop or on a coffee shop table. You can then track its progress through the site or go ‘hunting' in the wild by searching for recently released books in your country. ‘BookCrossers,' when needing to take a break from all this tracking and hunting, can also discuss matters literary in the many lively forums.

The site has been such a hit that ‘Bookcrossing' has even made it into the dictionary, being defined in the Concise OED as ‘the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.' According to the site, more than 700,000 people are signed up with hundreds joining each day. If you are not a book fetishist and are happy for your books to go on incredible journeys, this might just be the site for you.