Back in December I shared my excitement upon discovering The Book Thing of Baltimore on a trip back to visit my family in the States. Run entirely through volunteers and donations, it’s an unassuming warehouse where you can go and get as many FREE books as you want. I was in heaven there, as you might imagine.
The unassuming shop front for Book Thing. (From their website)
Well, on March 2nd Book Thing suffered a fire that has temporarily closed it down. Books + fire = incredibly sad. Their space is currently unusable and much of the stock was destroyed.
Here’s a great LitHub article about Book Thing and the post-fire strategy. Clean-up efforts are still underway and it’s unclear how soon they can think about reopening.
If you’re local, keep an eye on their Facebook page to see how you can help out. Or, no matter where you are, you can join me in giving a donation via their home page.
“Our mission is to put unwanted books into the hands of those who want them,” they say. I hope they’ll be able to do just that again very soon.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
What a shocking loss. I hope the fire was by accident, not design. I love these pop-up libraries that seem to be emerging these days. There’s one in an old phone box in a village called Blacko in Lancashire which we pass from time to time. And buses on a route near us now include a book-exchange shelf as a permanent feature of their design. Brilliant.
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I love the Little Free Library and Book-Cycle movements. I hope to get involved myself.
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So sorry to hear this.
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How awful. Hopefully they’ll be able to get it up and running again!
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[…] Luckily I managed to find a copy of this one plus the Lessing (see below) in the Nature section at Book Thing of Baltimore. In a preface to the 1978 edition Sarton reveals that Tom Jones was, indeed, a real cat, a stray […]
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