4,800 Books and 10 Legs

In a ritual repeated nearly every weekend for the past decade here in Colombia’s war-weary Caribbean hinterland, Luis Soriano gathered his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, in front of his home on a recent Saturday afternoon. Sweating already under the unforgiving sun, he strapped pouches with the word “Biblioburro” painted in blue letters to the donkeys’ backs and loaded them with an eclectic cargo of books destined for people living in the small villages beyond.

In a country that has suffered so much violence in the last half century plus, this is a heart-warming story of a man and books, a triumph of the human spirit that is not a cliché.

“I started out with 70 books, and now I have a collection of more than 4,800,” said Mr. Soriano, 36, a primary school teacher who lives in a small house here with his wife and three children, with books piled to the ceilings.

A whimsical riff on the bookmobile, Mr. Soriano’s Biblioburro is a small institution: one man and two donkeys. He created it out of the simple belief that the act of taking books to people who do not have them can somehow improve this impoverished region, and perhaps Colombia.

A breakthrough came several years ago when he heard excerpts over the radio of a novel, “The Ballad of Maria Abdala,” by Juan Gossaín, a Colombian journalist and writer. Mr. Soriano wrote a letter to the author, asking him to lend a copy of the book to the Biblioburro. After Mr. Gossaín broadcast details of Mr. Soriano’s project on his radio program, book donations poured in from throughout Colombia. A local financial institution, Cajamag, provided some financing for the construction of a small library next to his home, but the project remains only half-finished for lack of funds.

He fractured his left leg in a fall from one of his burros in July, leaving him with a limp. And some of his readers like the books they borrow so much that they fail to return them. Two books that vanished not long ago: an illustrated sex education manual, and a copy of “Like Water for Chocolate,” the Mexican writer Laura Esquivel’s novel about food and love in a traditional Mexican family.

And there are dangers inherent to venturing into the backlands around La Gloria. Two years ago, Mr. Soriano said, bandits surprised him at a river crossing, found that he carried almost no money, and tied him to a tree. They stole one item from his book pouch: “Brida,” the story of an Irish girl and her search for knowledge, by the Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho.

“For some reason, Paulo Coelho is at the top of everyone’s list of favorites,” said Mr. Soriano, hiding a grin under the shade of his sombrero vueltiao, the elaborately woven cowboy hat popular in Colombia’s interior.

Luis Soriano, a teacher from La Gloria, Colombia, traveled to the village of El Brasil with his Biblioburro on Oct. 11. The donkeys are named Alfa and Beto.



Slide show

If It's Not by Tolstoy, Hold On to Your Rubles

Libraries remain valuable social institutions, though their roles are changing. Many people think of libraries as "free internet access" or "free wi-fi" and couldn't care less about books, though many people think of libraries as places to socialize, to get books and DVDs, and to go to merely as a destination.

I was shocked a couple of years ago when I learned a fellow worker with small children didn't know where the neighborhood branch of the local public library was. Turns out any time his kids wanted a book, he went out and bought it for them. Same for his own reading.

This is one of the big changes of the last couple of decades: B&N as a destination, a place to look at books, to socialize. Part of it is a generational change: people in their twenties got used to getting an expensive cup of coffee and hanging out at the bookstore. Another part is institutional: libraries did not change enough to stay popular with newer generations. Yet another part is simply progress, change, the tide of social history: libraries and librarians are not highly regarded, libraries seen as stodgy places one has to be quiet, to follow rules, and to do as one is told, librarians as overbearing women who are quick to reprimand and slow to warm up.

Ever since I was a little boy, we made regular visits to the library, where I would sate my reading passion of the moment. Robert Louis Stevenson's works, the now largely forgotten Henry Ware novels of Joseph A. Altsheler, the Bruce Catton histories of the Civil War – I read them all.

B&N became part of the culture of acquisitiveness, of displaying one's ability to spend, what I'd call the Reagan culture.