Check this out as an example of both an unfettered gift economy and creative ‘consumption’:
The ‘3 Rs’ of BookCrossing
Read a good book (you already know how to do that)
Register it here (along with your journal comments), get a unique BCID (BookCrossing ID number), and label the book
Release it for someone else to read (give it to a friend, leave it on a park bench, donate it to charity, ‘forget’ it in a coffee shop, etc.), and get notified by email each time someone comes here and records journal entries for that book.
And if you make Release Notes on the book, others can Go Hunting for it and try to find it! “
I’ll take meaningless acts of generosity over “culturejamming” any day. I just shudder to think how many lonely and confused books might end up in bins, nursing their abandonment issues…