The Bus Stop Library

Somebody put a small wooden crate of paperbacks at my bus stop on Delancey Avenue with a sign: "Take one. Bring one back. Or don't. Happy reading." Nobody knows who.

I've been commuting from that stop for six years, and those twenty minutes in the morning used to be the dullest of my day. Now I grab a book, read on the ride, and drop it back the next morning. I've read a Swedish mystery, a biography of a pastry chef, and a book of poems about cows that was genuinely moving.

People started leaving notes in the margins. "Chapter 4 made me laugh out loud on the 22." "Whoever underlined this, same." Someone pressed a maple leaf between two pages of a romance novel.

It's the smallest library in the world. It's also my favorite.