Little Free Library book crawl

 I have been trying to take a walk every day during the past year. I had originally started  because I was so out of shape from being ill for so long. As I got stronger, I continued because I wanted to be in better shape for the times I traveled: I had been brutally surprised the first time I went to Japan with Rosemary when I got wiped out and had circulation problems due to walking on pavement for so many hours. The second time we traveled there, I wore compression socks and was in better shape but still had to rest frequently. My trips to LA and Seattle were done when I was able to walk several miles without being completely worn out, so I when I had to cancel all my travel plans in 2020, I decided that I would treat my walks like running laps on a track. Just do it every day and stop worrying about whether or not I had a destination now that all the destinations were closed or off limits. 

I have ended up with three primary walks, each oriented around the Little Free Library book boxes that my neighbors have made. The first is just a straight shot down Channing toward San Pablo and back, which is about 2.5 mile. The end point is a Little Free Library box. It doesn't often have new stock but I've found some good books there so I always check. If I go up a block for the return loop, there are three more boxes: two on Spaulding and one by the school near Milvia. Not a lot of turnover there either but still some good finds.

The second walk is a north loop up to Virginia and back down Milvia. There are four Little Free Library boxes on this loop, which is just a little shorter than the first walk. These tend to have more literary offerings, and often there are uncorrected proof books, so someone must either be a bookseller or know somebody who is. The third walk is the one I take when I'm feeling tired or crabby or the weather is not great, aka my short walk. It's the southern loop, down Milvia to a Little Free Library box that is just a few blocks from the Berkeley Bowl. This is the original destination box that I found when I went grocery shopping years ago. 

There are a couple of other book boxes that I haven't visited for a while now because I'm no longer walking in that direction for a weekly appointment, but I have too many books so I don't need to add more to the huge pile of books I've found over the last several months. I return each book as I read it, but I have not respected the one-in/one-out rule and have accumulated quite a few. My last three acquisitions are: Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, a book I used to own but never read; John Baxter's The Perfect Meal, by an author I'd read when I was anticipating my trip to Paris; and Leif Enger's Virgil Wander, set in Minnesota so I must read it.