What a Little Library Taught Me About Human Patterns

Maybe we’re not as bad as we think we are?

A couple of months ago, my partner made me a Little Library to stand outside our flat. Once it was installed and storm-proofed, we painstakingly filled it with a high-brow/low-brow collection of books. There were enough literary titles to give it some bookish cachet— we’re both writers after all—as well as some thrillers, beach reads, kids books, and even my old driving test practice manual to make it fun and useful for everyone.

It’s a beautifully designed, cheerful object, and something I’ve always dreamed of having. But once the ‘Book Nook’ was installed, I started to worry about what might happen next.

Would people offload far more books than could fit in the box, thereby creating a literary dumping ground of books wasting away in the rain? Or maybe no one would be interested in our whimsical offering at all, leaving our efforts to foster some literary bonhomie unnoticed. Or maybe people would simply take without giving, meaning I’d be tasked with buying bargain books to make sure the thing wasn’t empty all the time.

Maybe you worry less than me and thus are unsurprised to hear that none of these things happened.