Julio Ojeda-Zapata: Little Free Libraries changed my life — once I took them seriously

I’ve long admired those Little Free Library box-on-pole creations that are set up outside thousands of Minnesota homes to traffic in the drug to beat all drugs — books.

I see the book shacks everywhere I go. As it happens, my 55104 area code has the greatest density of such book-exchange kiosks in Minnesota. St. Paul, home to the nonprofit group that today celebrates its 11th birthday on the first-ever Little Free Library Week, boasts more book nooks than found in any of 25 U.S. states.

It’s too bad I squandered this reading opportunity for a decade. I was never more than a casual patron. Then, recently, two things happened.

First, I fell off my bicycle last summer and suffered a concussion that put me off biking forever. I concluded that I am too absentminded to safely cycle from place to place — I have had so many close calls!— and realized that I would kill myself sooner or later. So I switched to hiking, often with my wife, who doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle.

Second, I became disenchanted with e-books. I favor public-library variants, available for download from the St. Paul Public Library to use on my iPad or Kindle. This is great, but I became stressed when got swamped with book-due notices. Hey, reading is supposed to be relaxing! So I went cold turkey (at least for the time being) with the digital reading.

Now I have a new book routine. Every morning, I set out on a three- to four-mile hike with my Apple Watch strapped to my wrist for activity monitoring, and my messenger bag slung over my shoulder for book harvesting. I never have a route, unless I am running an errand. The Little Free Library group provides an app with registered boxes shown on a map that I could use to maximize my book-plucking potential, but I delight in the serendipity. Even wandering at random, I will invariably stumble on a half dozen or more boxes on a 90-minute power walk.

Some I wouldn’t find in any other way. Of the estimated 160,000 boxes installed worldwide, only 62,300 are mapped. Of an estimated 135,000 boxes in the United States, only 57,000 are on the map (which is also available on the web).

Minnesota has 2,857 mapped boxes but “the total number of libraries is likely higher,” Margret Aldrich, Little Free Library spokeswoman, said. Likewise, St. Paul has 610 mapped boxes but the total is likely greater.

That’s up from 2011, when there were two known boxes in St. Paul, and only four statewide. Wisconsinite Todd Bol sparked the Little Free Library movement in 2009 with a box he put outside his Hudson home as a tribute to his mom. The number of boxes mushroomed from several dozen in 2012 to about 22,000 in 2014 and about 75,000 by 2018.

Bol died that year. The nonprofit moved to St. Paul last year.

Minneapolis area codes 55406 and 55419 are second and third in metro-area Little Free Library density, after 55104. East-metro area codes 55105 (in St. Paul) and 55113 (Roseville and bits of nearby communities) are next on this list.

The nonprofit estimates that 253,760 books by 317,200 visitors have been shared at boxes in St. Paul alone, to date. Statewide, there are more kiosks than in any but two other states, California and Texas.

You can spot Little Free Library boxes in unexpected places. Gov. Tim Walz recently installed one at the capitol building earlier this year.

The Little Free Library nonprofit has encouraged small businesses in diverse parts of the metro and in other cities to install boxes as part of its Read in Color program, which champions books “that provide perspectives on racism and social justice; celebrate BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized voices; and incorporate experiences from all identities for all readers.” (BIPOC is short for Black, Indigenous, People of Color.)

One of the boxes I have recently come across, at Lincoln Avenue near Dale Street South in St. Paul, has a sign reading “Library of Banned Books.” No such books were in the box when I opened it, but I admire the sentiment. It’s echoed by Little Free Library executive director Greig Metzger, who says, “We think book banning is anathema (and) not part of our world.” He acknowledges that box contents are largely a reflection of the communities where the stations are found.

My community clearly has broad interests and does not shy from difficult topics. I am agog at my recent finds, which include:

•A 1959 copy of Arthur C. Clark’s “Across the Sea of Stars,” a thick volume in surprisingly good condition containing two of the sci-fi legend’s novels and 18 of his short stories.

•“Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” by Michael Schumacher. As I read, I’ll hum “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” by Gordon Lightfoot, who recently died.

•A near-mint copy of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” Delia Owens’ 2018 coming-of-age murder mystery that last year spun off a movie (it’s good, but you want to read the book first).

•“The Nazi Conscience,” the Harvard University Press work of scholarship by Claudia Koonz, who dissects the conditions spawning a society that would perpetrate horrors.

•“How Mankind Committed the Ultimate Infamy at Auschwitz: A New History” by Laurence Rees. I found this one in the same box as “The Nazi Conscience.”

•The 2002 edition of “The Year’s Best Science Fiction,” edited by Gardner Dozois. Any self-respecting sci-fi fan will yelp in glee when stumbling on one of these anthologies.

•“The Rise and Fall of the British Empire” by Lawrence James. This one comes in the nick of time because I was looking for something good ‘n’ thick for lakeshore reading.

•“What If: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions” by Randall Munroe, creator of the nerd-fave webcomic XKCD. This one looks unputdownable.

•“Greenlights” by Matthew McConaughey. Wait, he wrote a memoir? And it was a New York Times bestseller? But is it any good? Alright, alright, alright, I will give it a try.

Amid my book wanderings, a problem became apparent. After repeatedly stumbling home with my bag so jam-packed I could not pull its cover closed, I began to amass a vast library. In other words, I was grabbing more than I was leaving, which went against the spirit of the “take a book, share a book” movement.

Oh, dear, there’s that stress, again. I forced myself to be more selective when ransacking a box, more probing in my triage when laying out my plunder for inspection after one of my walks, and more efficient when reading a book to determine whether I want to keep going or try out another title. Still, I have a big pile to whittle down.

I don’t just love Little Free Library boxes for the books. As one with an interest in architecture and design, I am fascinated by how owners lavish time and energy to make their book nooks unique — often matching their homes’ color schemes and physical attributes. This is not required. You can buy a premade Little Free Library, but I’m delighted at how many go to the extra effort.

I doubt I will maintain my current pace of Little Free Library visits forever. I am fickle in my reading behavior, and at some point a pendulum will swing and I will proclaim that e-book borrowing is the bomb, and that hardcovers are, well, kinda clunky.

But Little Free Library boxes have broadened my world in ways I will never forget. Books they’ve provided would never become available to me in other ways — because they’re old, or obscure or just weird. For this reason, I’ll feel a compulsion to make my rounds at least on occasion.

I just never know what I’ll get … and eventually get to give away.