Melbs Heroes Are Hiding Free Books On Trams To Make Commutes Suck Less Ass

It might well be helping save the planet, but public transport is categorically the worst. You’re crammed into the tiniest feasible space with 200 other commuters, half of which are having an extremely animated conversation with themselves out loud, and the other half of which have never heard of showering, deodorant or personal space. It is a hell.

The best possible outcome is that you come out smelling like armpit having listened to a pretty good episode of a podcast, the worst possible outcome is you get stabbed with a mechanical pencil by someone who spent their train ride telling everyone that aliens built the pyramids.
Luckily, some industrious nerds are working on alleviating the brutal tedium of your commute (if you live in Melbourne that is) by sneakily leaving dope literature around buses, trains and trams for passengers to find and read.
Books On The Rail is taking a leaf out of the book (sorry) of a similar service in London, and getting “book ninjas” to place a flyer and a sticker explaining what the deal is in and on a book of their choosing and leave it where a bored public transport user might hungrily pick it up.

Look out for this captivating book by Stewart Jackel set in Fitzroy, Melbourne in 1941. #booksontherail #albertswar ????

A photo posted by Books on the Rail (@booksontherail) on

Once they’re done with the book, readers are encouraged to leave it on public transport again so that someone else can get a kick from it. So far they reckon they’ve deployed about 300 books, a lot of which have been donated by publishers and authors.
It’s still early days but at this stage they’re just hopeful cleaners don’t pick ’em up and throw ’em out:

“We’re hoping that most of the books go into safe hands, people who are excited to read the books.”

Keep an eye out for them, it’s basically impossible to play Pokémon GO on the train anyway.

You can read more about it or even sign up to be one of their book ninjas right here.
Source: ABC.

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