All onboard! The world’s largest floating bookstore.

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It’s the world’s largest floating bookstore – but then, I expect the competition isn’t stiff.  Not every enthusiastic book dealer can pony up for a 430-foot ship.  The good ship “Logos Hope” is 430 feet long, and carries 5,000 books at any time.  About 450 people can be on the ship at once.

Since its 2004 launch, “Logos Hope” has visited 42 countries.  It has hosted 2.5 million visitors onboard, and distributed 3 million books.  “Distributed” because it is run by a German charity (Gute Bücher für Alle, or Good Books for All).  It also gives health education, including help with AIDS prevention.

According to BookRiot, the ship usually stays in a port for several weeks, which allows the unpaid volunteer crew (they sign up for a year or two) to take on community projects and bring on board as many visitors as would like.

It’s currently in the Philippines, in Subic Bay.  According to its online schedule, it headed to Hong Kong, Cambodia, and Thailand in the coming months.

Read more about the venture here.  Video below for those who like boats.

 

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven

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