Spotted, a Little Free Library in the neighborhood!
Insider #154 with the largest free library I have seen + this week's giveaway
Dear reader,
This week, I visited three more Little Free Libraries in my wider neighborhood. Let us peek inside and think about what it means for so many books to be free for anyone to take, to share, to read. Little Free Libraries (LFLs) are a beautiful thing of humankind.
The SneakyArt (Insider) Post is written for paid subscribers of this publication. This month, I am sharing updates from my self-appointed artist residency at Little Free Libraries all over Vancouver.
Scroll to find the results from last week’s giveaway, and this week’s contest.
📰 Also, I spoke with CTV Vancouver about this project and my general fascination with LFLs.
You can support my endeavour to give away art this holiday season and bring attention to the LFLs of my world, by becoming a SneakyArt Insider.
📬 Last Week’s Giveaway
Last week, I asked which book you would leave inside a Little Free Library. I am pleased to discover that many readers already use LFLs - managing one in their front yard, passing along books they have finished reading, or identifying them as an integral part of the local book recycling ecosystem.
But my favorite comment this week was from Insider Melinda, for whom this post led to the discovery of several LFLs in their vicinity. I am so glad to aid this discovery and catalyze a lively community project!
Congratulations Melinda, you are the winner of last week’s giveaway. Please email me your mailing address, I would love to send you a tiny drawing!
📚 Fiction v Non Fiction
I found a Little Free Library along a residential avenue off Main St. The rain let up for a minute, so I was able to look through the books. I am always partial to a library with more fiction than non-fiction. Even though there are years when I read more non-fiction than fiction, the ones I re-read are almost always fiction. So I see the act of giving away a story from one’s bookshelf as a deeper personal sacrifice, a greater contribution to one’s neighborhood.
Reader, even as I write these words, I wonder where to draw the line between fiction and non-fiction. Is not a retelling of real events already a fiction, subject to bias, interpretation, and dramatization? Is a story that lives in our minds and shapes our values not real? Is ‘fiction v non-fiction’ a convenient-but-lazy categorization?
📚 Book Sharing as Neighborhood Insight
I am fascinated by the contents of any Little Free Library because essentially they are anarchic phenomena. They are part of an emergent network. They display swarm intelligence. They obey a curious kind of Gaussian distribution, in that a single book cannot say much but a large collection can surely act as a window into reality. In other words, a Little Free Library is a mildly chaotic insight into the character of a neighborhood.
Reader, do you agree? If so, what can we tell from the contents of this Little Free Library?
📚 The Largest Free Collection I have Seen
Next to Riley Park on Ontario St is the largest Little Free Library I have seen. Three shelves of books across a wide variety of genres. The street was quite dark when I visited though, and it had begun to rain heavily. So I could not spend much time looking through the collection.
Below, do you see something you have heard about before? Do you see a chance to dive into a subject you are curious about? Could you let the free-ness of this exchange free you into making an adventurous decision? Reader, which book would you take from this LFL?
Dive into the comments to help other readers find a book. Share your Little Free Library experiences. Best comment wins a free drawing in their mail!
Thank you for giving me a space in your inbox. I am so grateful for your support of my work.
I too prefer LFLs which tend towards fiction over non-fiction. Partly I find that non-fiction collections are either out of date business books or tend to proselytize a particular type of belief.
Interesting! I love memoirs and biographies and also historical non-fiction that reads like fictiion. Non-fiction is such a magical place to me. Especially the graphic novel non-fiction!