Comments
By lava_pidgeon 2026-03-0617:035 reply I'm not sure about other countries. There is a culture refuse to throw away books in Germany. People would put on the streets for free (I found two interesting books with this method).
By WalterBright 2026-03-0620:252 reply > People would put on the streets for free
In the US people put "Little Free Libraries" in their yards. They're all over the place in the Seattle area.
Some dude was giving away books after his talk at the CPP Users Group in Redmond, got some good sci-fi.
By WalterBright 2026-03-0621:06 That was me!
By pseudohadamard 2026-03-074:57 I've seen them in Scandinavian countries as well, glass-fronted cases in front of houses or on trees. There's a few here (not Scandinavia) too, sometimes old refridgerators because they're pretty well sealed against the elements.
By gom_jabbar 2026-03-0618:042 reply German book culture is great! When he was in Karlsruhe to profile Peter Sloterdijk, The New Yorker reporter Thomas Meaney seemed surprised by it:
"Over the summer, ordinary Germans who spotted his [Peter Sloterdijk] books in my hands engaged me in conversation on trains, in coffee shops, at universities, and in bookshops." [0]
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/a-celebrity-ph...
By HackerNewt-doms 2026-03-073:021 reply Sloterdijk is a rare celebrity philosopher, popularized by his many TV spots. However, whether people actually know his philosophy as well as they know his face is a different story altogether.
By gom_jabbar 2026-03-0718:24 Agreed. Even assuming that most people aren't deeply familiar with his philosophy, it's still nice for a culture to have something like a celebrity philosopher.
wild, when I went to germany I only saw kebabs and barber shops
and a rave
By HackerNewt-doms 2026-03-073:191 reply > kebabs and barber shops
Living in Germany, I can confirm that it’s part of the everyday scenery here (Stadtbild).
> and a rave
I can confirm that techno culture is a deeply rooted part of the urban landscape. However, the era of massive, free street parades effectively ended with the 2010 Love Parade tragedy in Duisburg, where a crowd crush claimed many lives. For years, such large-scale public raves vanished due to strict safety regulations. It’s only recently that we’ve seen a revival with 'Rave The Planet' in Berlin—an event led by the original Love Parade founders that attempts to bring techno back to the streets, though under much tighter organizational control.
By bananzamba 2026-03-078:03 I found some nice books in German paper recycling containers. Including a nice old etymology dictionary that I treasured
By mrweasel 2026-03-0620:43 Every now and then I need to go to the recycling station here in Denmark. They have a special container/dumpster just for books. The second hand shops will take a small quantum of books, stores the buy and resell old DVDs, games, records, porn, comics and what-not, no longer buy books as there's no profit in second hand books. The dumpster is always overflowing with books, books that you're not allowed to take.
Germany is a lot more conservative than Denmark, so I wouldn't be surprised if they where more reluctant to throw out books. On the other hand, other than myself, how many people really want to read random novels from the 1970s or a 140 year old book on economics, telling you that Trump is wrong about tariffs?
Maybe with the advent of LLMs, old books will get a resurgence. If a book is printed in the 20th century, at least I know it's written by humans.
By welcome_dragon 2026-03-0620:16 I mean what are they going to do? Burn them? Oh wait...
By HackerNewt-doms 2026-03-073:312 reply In Germany, there was a trend of setting up public bookcases in town squares where passers-by could drop off or take books. But as things go, after a while, they slowly started to go out of fashion. Since then, kebab shops and barbershops have become a more common sight in the cityscape (Stadtbild).
They are still common and popular in many places and I have found cool stuff there often.
By zvr 2026-03-0710:01 I also regularly visit the 3-4 that are within 10 minutes walking distance from my place. It's fun to see that they have slowly become more "specialized"; for example, English books typically appear in only one of them.
By bombcar 2026-03-078:12 In the US they're often called "Little Free Libraries" and you can join groups around them: https://littlefreelibrary.org
By mbirth 2026-03-080:28 They didn’t go out of fashion. It’s just that some people emptied them to sell the books on flea markets, sometimes drunk people used those for their “business”; and sometimes, kids set them on fire. And this was just in a rather small town.
By skyberrys 2026-03-0617:28 The slanted library lining the attic of his home is to die for. I could easily see this happening to myself in my old age. I love books and it's quite a challenge to keep and collect all of them. Why haven't I thought of slanted ceiling book cases before? And 70k books by the time you are 88, that's only 1000 books per year after age 18. Okay that does work out to more than 3 books a day, so reading every single one is challenging, but in your old age an unread book is something to look forward to. I'm sad to read that he's passed away.
