Out and About with ReLIT NY
It’s not hard to stumble upon free books these days. Discards from stoop sales, bookstores, and libraries seem to pop up everywhere. Craigslist users frequently offer up boxes of old romance novels and dated bestsellers, and there are online programs that coördinate book exchanges by mail.
But few programs bring free books to the public as directly as ReLIT NY. ReLIT—short for Read, Recycle, Repeat Literature in Transit—first garnered attention over a year ago when its members began going out to subway stations once a month, carrying boxes of donated books, waving green signs on sticks, and yelling, “Free books for your commute!” The boxes usually go empty within an hour, though sometimes a couple of books are left—there’s one Dostoevsky novel in a Swedish translation that never seems to get snatched up.
Buku Sarkar, the founder, used to run a distribution agency for an Indian media company. She was inspired to start ReLIT after reading about a London-based organization called Choose What You Read, which handed out books at commuter hubs. “The subway station was the most natural choice,”Sarkar told me. “People have so much dead time.”
Like the London group, ReLIT has public drop-boxes located around the city for readers to return a book to circulation or donate used ones. But Choose What You Read was established as a gesture against the environmental impact of free newspapers, which isn’t Sarkar’s focus. She hopes to expand ReLIT’s handouts to schools and hospitals, and has already begun partnering with teachers and students at Stuyvesant High School and Eleanor Roosevelt High School.
The monthly handouts are run with the assistance of fifteen to twenty volunteers, mostly students and young professionals. As curious bystanders come over to check out the collection of books, their reactions vary. Some are confused: at a handout in Union Square earlier this month, one woman approached a ReLIT volunteer. “Is this a mystery book?” she asked, holding up a copy of Michael Madden’s “The Seesaw Syndrome.”
The volunteer examined the cover. “I think it’s like a medical mystery.”
“Oh, no,” the woman said, putting the book back in the box.
Mystery letdowns aside, New Yorkers seem excited about their new open-air lending library. Most borrowers walk away satisfied with their selection and happy to have taken part in Sarkar’s mission: to save New York’s unloved books from the trash bin, one reader at a time.
