The books! Yes, of course, the books. Take them away, give them back: it’s fun, it’s frugal, it’s sustainable, it’s a mitzvah. Little Free Libraries – those sweet roadside hutches stuffed with books awaiting readers – are participatory blessings, the literary equivalent of wayside shrines. Taking and giving Little Free Library books, we confer and receive peculiarly nerdy, neighborly alms. We score good reads on the cheap; we gladden little-librarian hearts.

So yes, the books are important. It’s all about the books, their coming and going, their sharing, their stories…

Unless.

Unless you only open the hutch to read the titles.

You might do that because none of the books appeal.

You might do that because someone you live with has declared that no book shall enter the house without another book being shown the door.

Or you might do that because inventorying the titles of Little Free Library books has become a kind of quest, an experiment in cultural echolocation, in accidental meaning, maybe even a practice of found poetry.

Cultural geo-positioning may be the least reliable, least valuable of these data caches. Let’s say that a Little Free Library in libertarian-beleaguered Grafton, NH, yields not a word of self-applause for self-reliance, not a single book by Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, F.A Hayek or any other sovereign-citizen cheerleader. What’s that tell us? Maybe real-world experience has changed the flatlander free-marketeers’ minds. Maybe they blamed the damage they’ve done on everyone else, pulled up stakes and stomped south. Or… maybe it means that true believers would never, ever put their sacred texts out on the street, where they might be disagreed with by nanny-state infidels.

I don’t try to deduce much of anything about the books I find in Little Free Libraries. Since anyone is welcome to take and give, the shelves don’t say anything trustworthy about the librarian, the neighborhood, the town or the state.

But if you like to read scattered yarrow stalks, if you savor the incongruities of excessively randomized playlists, if you skip a step to avoid sidewalk cracks, you might start paying attention to Little Free Library titles. Inadvertent sequences. Happenstantial resonances. Portentous monotonies. I read free library shelves the way cynical Romans read dove’s entrails, the way dadaists read wastebaskets.

Rituals have rules. I read left-right, top to bottom, and my version of the Little Free Library found-poetry game has one paramount stricture: don’t touch. No turning spine-first shelvings around. No rearranging books for better title flow. The random arrangement of titles is what it is: disappointing, disturbing, ironic, inspiring. Take it and leave it.

Unless you need a cheap read.

Three recent inventories:

In Brattleboro:

(Lying sideways atop other titles, a child’s board book, title turned away)

Lincoln in the Bardo

Growing Up with a Single Parent

Mustique Island

One Stop too Far

The Sharp Edge of Mercy