Almost all of us like to read on the tube, and it’s great to talk to other people about what we’ve been reading (if they’ll let us!). In that spirit, we spoke to Kathy, the author of the

Books for London (BFL): Everyone reads on the tube – so what prompted you to start writing about it?

Books on the Tube (BOT): I’ve always been a very prolific reader, ever since the days of Biff, Chip and Kipper, but when I went to university the novels had to give way to textbooks and lecture notes. However after graduating I moved to London and found myself spending almost two hours a day commuting on the tube. With all this new-found spare time I started reading again and suddenly found myself getting through a lot of books very quickly. Realising that my friends were starting to develop a glazed look whenever I was rabbiting on about my latest read I thought it might be better to write things down and put them out on the Internet instead of boring everyone I met. I never really expected anyone to read my blog so I’m thrilled to find people who appreciate what I have to say and who want to share their thoughts as well.

BFL: Have you ever come across a book ‘in the wilds’ of the tube (if so, what did you do)?

BOT: Lots of newspapers and a French magazine (Santé) which I picked up to test my rusty language skills, but never a book. I was however lucky enough to pick up a book from the Books for London trial at Tooting Broadway station. I can’t remember what the book was called now but it was set in a boy’s school and had something to do with a secret and a lot of bees. After reading it I left it on the tube so hopefully someone else picked it up and maybe it’s still doing the rounds!

BFL: You’ve written about your love of second-hand books on your blog. What’s your favourite, and where did you find it?

BOT: It’s very hard to say what my favourite second hand purchase is because there have been so many. I buy a lot of the classic books in charity shops, especially the ones I don’t think I’m going to enjoy but have to read because they’re on my list. I’ve also discovered a number of new authors because I’ve picked up a book in a second-hand shop and it’s much easier to pay £2-4 for a second hand copy to “give it a go” than it is to pay full price! In this way I’ve found Attica Locke, Linwood Barclay, Stephen May, Wilkie Collins, the list goes on and on.

BFL: Do you have any special techniques for reading on a crowded tube if you can’t get a seat?

BOT: Funny you should ask; when I get the tube in a morning I don’t sit. Even though I could easily get a seat (I live almost at the end of the line) I prefer to stand by the door so I don’t have to push through the crowds to get off. After several months of practice I’ve finally been able to perfect the knack of turning pages with one hand while clinging onto a rail. It involves sort of resting the book against your chest/the shoulder of the person in front of you and rubbing your thumb along the page until it lifts up. No papercuts yet. I do end up reading at some funny angles though, either with the book pressed against my chest so I can only see one page at a time or up in the air so it’s above someone’s shoulder. It gets difficult sometimes but it’s very rare that I have to give up.

Credit: Craig Freeman (Creative Commons BY NC SA 3.0)

BFL: What’s your favourite book about London, or set in London?

BOT: I love it whenever I read a book that mentions somewhere in London that I know, it gives me a little bit of a thrill to think that I’ve stood in the same place as characters I’m reading about but my absolute favourite is a book called 253 by Geoff Ryman. It’s a unique book which gives an insight into the 253 passengers on a Bakerloo line train one afternoon. Every character has their own page and is described in 253 words – what they look like, what they’re thinking/doing/dreaming of and so on. Some of them link together so you can flick backwards and forwards to see the stories unfold. It’s a fantastic piece of work and perfect for nosy people like me who want to know more about their neighbour on the train!

BFL: Could you imagine swapping your book with a stranger on the tube, once you had finished it?

BOT: I’d definitely swap books with a stranger! I’m always looking for something new to read and I’m open to almost every kind of genre out there so I think it’s a fantastic idea to pass books around and share them out. I’m also one of those people who, after reading a great book, wants everyone else to read it as well so it works both ways.

BFL: Final question – on the tube: paperback or Kindle?

BOT: Paperback, no question! Books are fascinating, they’re all different sizes, shapes, colours, have different fonts and covers and people have put time and effort into designing them yet the Kindle takes them all and makes them look the same. For me there’s nothing more exciting than getting a new book, feeling it in my hand, wondering what the cover signifies, reading the blurb and flicking through the pages to see how it feels and smells. Books have a soul and the Kindle is destroying them.

To read more of Kathy’s musings on her tube readings, check out the Books on the Tube blog.

If you haven’t encountered it yet, Chromaroma makes your Oystercard, and by extension you, part of an enormous game that is travelling and commuting in London. By swiping your Oyster card in various train and tube stations you can amass points – and play against other commuters. But that’s only the beginning. As with any good game, there are lots of ways to score extra points. There are themed missions based on everything from books and movies to London’s geography and history to that reward you for visiting certain stations in a period of time (the anagram-based missions are particularly nifty). You can have a play around with an extra station here and there, or jump in properly and use your Travelcard to see the city in a whole new light. Will that extra trip to Swiss Cottage push you and your team into the lead, or is it better to head to Notting Hill Gate instead?

Credit: Melvin Heng (Creative Commons BY NC ND)

Collections are another way Chromaroma can reward you with more points, and this is where Books for London comes in. Collections are groups of stations that are all based around a common theme – for example, all the stations that have ‘Bridge’ or ‘Gate’ in their name, or all the stations on a specific line. By visiting all these stations you get a huge points bonus, and (hopefully) a prized place on the leaderboard. Chromaroma has now created a Collection just for us – the Book Worm Hole, meaning that you can now head all around London and collect points and swap your books at the same time! All the stations that have book swaps are present and accounted for, and you can get a shiny extra 250 points for visiting all of them.

So if you see the tube a bit differently to everyone else, and you love books,  sign up to Chromaroma and start swapping books, and collecting points. You never know where it might take you in this great city of ours!

Books for London recently undertook a ‘book crawl’ across London to release CollectConnect’s Freedbook. Freelance journalist Diana Vollmerhausen wrote the following article on the crawl and Books for London, and has very kindly let us repost it here.

If you believe that the likes of Kindles and Kobos are going to spell the end of the old-fashioned paperback, think again. Book swaps are the latest trend. There is one at my local Homebase in Acton, the Rockett pub on Churchfield Road has got one and, in July, a bookshelf appeared in Acton Central station.

In fact, book swaps are popping up all over London, as I learned last Saturday when I went along to a stop on the “book crawl” at Acton Central, organised by Books for London. They are running a book sharing scheme in the capital’s train stations to turn London into a capital of literacy! According to the charity, some 13 million books are sent to UK landfills every year. As the campaign points out, with increasing pressure on landfill sites, it’s just not sustainable. In any case, for most avid readers, throwing a book in the rubbish would pretty much equate to a criminal offense.

“We want to keep books in circulation” says Chris Gilson, the campaign’s founder, “and combine people power with something that most people do in London every day – use the tube and trains.”

The scheme is run by volunteers who regularly check and tidy up the bookshelf, but other than that, it looks after itself and is entirely self-policing. After an initial stash of books is supplied by the campaign, people either return the same book they’ve taken, or swap it for a different book they no longer want.

Sara Nathan, who started the book swap in Acton says “we’ve not had any major problems. The local community are really behind it and they look after it just as much as I do. I get emails from residents and commuters regularly telling me how much they appreciate the book swap and how it has brought a real sense of community back into Acton.”

The Acton book swap seems to offer a fairly good selection too. I spotted several popular fiction titles and the “factual” shelf was brimming with autobiographies and travel writing. “The other week a recent divorcee donated an entire collection of English Literature, which was very popular. We get a lot of poetry. That always disappears very quickly, I guess it’s easy for people to dip in and out of on the way to work” says Sara. Some of the more weird and wonderful literature on offer includes a pile of “Psychology Roundup” from 1964 in German, which may well not escape the landfill site.

Books for London has already spread across the capital. There are bookshelves in West Ealing, Charlton, Cheam, Enfield Chase, Kingston, Northfields, Rayne’s Park and Wimbledon.”

The campaign is now hoping to roll out book swaps in tube stations too and have been in negotiations with TFL for a year now, but it’s very slow progress. “Mostly the problems are around health and safety” says Chris. “For example they don’t want bookshelves made from wood because of fire hazards and the shelves have to be bolted to the wall so they can’t be used as weapons, the list goes on. So we are not sure if or when it’s going to happen.”

I for one think it’s a great idea, and hope that TFL won’t let its fear of shelf wielding hooligans and book-loathing arsonists get in the way. David Cranston, Customer Host at Acton Central Station agrees with me.

“The station staff all think it’s a brilliant idea. The customers are always commenting, asking what the book swap is all about, how it works, etc. They like it. People are browsing and are actually talking to each other. It has made the station a better place.”

“A Kindle? Nah, the spirit of books can never be replaced.” Well said, David.

Check our Diana’s website at http://dianavollmerhausen.com/, and follow her on Twitter at @Diana_VB.

Our shelf is located in the main subway, next to the Kiosk, and close to the entrance to Platform 5 (Central line West).

Please have a look and let us know what you think. We’re also very keen for people to help look after the shelf, so please get in touch if you’re interested. Here’s a look at the new book swap shelf:

Our new book swap in Stratford Station!

New book swap and sign

We’re also going to be working with Newham Volunteers to keep the shelf stocked and tidy, so we’re very grateful for their help at Stratford.

Thanks to station manager James, Dave and Ian at Greater Anglia and Stratford Station for all of their help and support for the book swap!

When you’re planning any activity that involves a good deal of travelling in London it’s fairly certain that it’s going to rain. This was definitely the case this Saturday when a group of intrepid artists and me assembled for the Freedbook crawl.  FreedBook is a 72 page softback book, containing 68 one-page stories from 50+ artists. There were 100 copies printed in the First Edition. Each book is individually numbered, and each is signed by at least one of the artists. Starting at 10am at Acton Central, we would tour across as many of London’s station book swaps as we could, hopefully ending up at Raynes Park a little after 4pm.

Braving the rain, I arrived at Acton Town slightly late but rendezvoused with Alban Low and the CollectConnect artists, some of which came all the way from Brighton and Swansea! After signing the first FreedBook and giving it a pride of place on local community organiser Sara Nathan’s book swap shelf, we were off to West Ealing.

After some slight confusion about bus routes we made it to West Ealing in time to drop off our second FreedBook at what was a very packed book swap shelf.

From West Ealing it was the long way out to Paddington and then north to Enfield Chase. Unfortunately the excellent book swap at MyCoffeeStop was closed that day, but CollectConnect had already arranged to send Karen Mercer, who runs MyCoffeeStop, a copy in advance:

#freedbook from @booksforlondon arrived today and has now been released, onto our bookswap @ My Coffee Stop instagr.am/p/SFsKl-A10L/

—
My Coffee Stop (@MyCoffeeStopUK) November 16, 2012

Without a book swap shelf, the group had to be a bit inventive about where to release the book…

Credit: Melanie Ezra (http://twitter.com/melanieezra)

Hopefully the book found a good home quickly!

Then it was back into town to head east to Charlton, where another FreedBook was released. The group was especially impressed with the quality of shelves at Charlton Station – a good example to shoot for with new shelves in stations in London!

Credit: Peter S Smith

Heading back westwards back to London Bridge, the group struck out for Couldson South. However, on arrival the book swap shelf that had been there only 18 months or so previously was no longer to be seen – possibly the casualty of a recent station refurbishment. All was not lost, however, and a book was released in the waiting area.

Credit: Peter S Smith

From Couldson South it was a dash towards Wimbledon via train and tram. Against all expectations, the group had defied the rain and kept to time, arriving at Wimbledon exactly as scheduled, in time to release a FreedBook in the waiting room on Platform 5. Alas the waiting room was rather empty of books when we went through, showing that the scheme there definitely has a good rate of take up!

Alban and the FreedBook at Wimbledon

After a few minutes in Wimbledon, it was then a quick hop by train to our final stop of the day, Raynes Park. Arriving there, we met with Chris Larkman, who has been maintaining the scheme since 2005, and was the inspiration for the Wimbledon swap, which in turn was what inspired the whole Books for London campaign. Having corresponded with Chris several times via email, it was great to finally meet him and talk about the fun and frustrations of running a station book swap. Chris signed our final FreedBook, and we released it onto the swap shelf at Raynes Park.

More than six hours, and untold miles after we began, we had finished our FreedBook crawl. We all said our goodbyes, and I made for West London. There was one final surprise in store, though. Passing through Kingston, we made the great discovery of another book swap scheme!

We’d run out of FreedBooks by this point, but I’d say Kingston will definitely be on the list for next time!

We’d love to hear where the FreedBooks end up, so if you find one, let us know!

CollectConnect have also written about the FreedBook crawl – read their article here.