Since 2009 over 50,000 Little Free Library book exchange boxes have sprung up on lawns worldwide, though some are worthy of a surprised second glance.

You’ve probably passed a Little Free Library during a recent walk, ride or drive though your neighborhood. Odds are you passed it off as a personal project of some local do-gooder or over-achieving parent but the so-called “Little Free Library Movement” is bigger, broader and more organized than anyone could guess.

The first Little Free Library was created by Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin as a tribute to his mother, a former schoolteacher and lifelong book-lover. Bol’s pioneering concept was meant to look like a miniature one-room schoolhouse but that design isn’t mandated, even for those who register with the non-profit Little Free Library Ltd. website and receive an official sign they can affix to their box. Size isn’t de rigeur either though the above Tardis library box is larger than most… especially on the inside. Flickr member ap^ snapped the example above from Bloomington, MN on April 27th of 2013.

Bustsellers

If you’re calling your Little Free Library “Headless Books“, it follows that your book box be decorated to display that fact. Crafted from a disused bREADbox and topped by a headless (and topless, at the risk of being redundant) mannequin torso scrounged from a local garage sale, The Headless Library can be found in NE Minneapolis.

Since September of 2012 the torso-topped library shared yard space with Penny’s Childrens Library – another ex-breadbox topped with a plastic lawn-ornament penguin because why not? Sadly, this library was trashed and the penguin stolen by unknown assailants during a spring blizzard in April of 2013… at press time the penguin was still missing. We suggest looking for it on top of a British woman’s TV set.

Book To The Future

Dubbed the Little Free Library 3D X, this futuristic little library comes to us courtesy of designer and Flickr member Robert Sekula (ethno folk funk architects) in cooperation with Andrej Poliak. Never thought you’d see the words “futuristic” and “library” in the same sentence, did you?

Morel Of The Stories

What is it about Minnesota and odd Little Free Libraries? Flickr member Marie Janssen (jamuraa) snapped the above “Little Tree Free Library” in New Brighton, MN, on August 11th of 2012. Another source states it’s modeled on a mushroom of the morel family.

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Book Box Bonanza 12 Freaky Little Free Libraries

Curling up with a glass of wine with a story has never been easier thanks to Librottiglia, a project that wraps printed pages around bottles of Italian reds and whites.

Each wine is paired with a specifically selected literary short intended to match the characteristics of the vintage with an appropriate genre and narrative. Drinkers are encouraged to pour a glass then pour over the pages of a unique tale.

Designed by Reverse Innovation for the Matteo Correggia winery in Italy, each 375-ML bottle is good for two glasses and an absorbing literary adventure. The covers in each case double as both book titles as well as wine labels and descriptions.

A piece of twine wraps the book to each bottle while the words themselves are printed on a thick paper stock to round out the stylized packaging. Stories include The Frog in the Belly, I Love You Forget Me and others by journalists, humorists and mystery writers.

“Today we read books on computers, tablets and mobile phones,” note the creators. “Why not on a bottle of wine?” they ask. “After years of discussion about analogue vs. digital, we want to propose an alternative: oenological” (meaning: related to the cultivation and study of wine).

The appearance of the city outside – complete with crosswalks and grids resembling aerial views of urban blocks – acts as a transition space between the entrance of a bookstore and the quiet, private spaces beyond. This space by XL-muse, located on the fourth floor of the Réel Mall in Shanghai, references the orderly aspects of urban aesthetics, carrying them from the sunny, exposed main room into the darkened alleys full of floor-to-ceiling shelves.

Street lights gently illuminate the rows of books in these tranquil hallways, organized like pedestrian promenades complete with central park benches and displays. Mirrors are employed to visually double the height of the shelves, making them feel as if they continue up into the sky and stretch far deeper into the building than they really do. Paths direct you from one ‘house’ of books to the next as you explore the shop.

In these atmospherically-lit areas bursting with dark-stained wood, shoppers feel like they’re navigating the city late at night, when the traffic has died down and the streets are eerily silent. The crosswalks continue into the small cafe, stepping right up onto the ceiling and then back out into the showroom, where white pegs inserted into the concrete walls can be pulled or pushed to create display niches.

Paired to fantastic effect, a series of arch-forming shelving units and a black-mirrored floor create a wraparound tunnel in a Chinese bookstore, punctuated by a fracture leading visitors through the resulting passageway.

Designed by Shanghai studio XL-Muse (images Shao Feng), these floor-to-ceiling shelves in the Yangzhou Zhongshuge bookshop drew inspiration from the winding and reflective Zhen Yuan river nearby, as well as the area’s arched bridges.

“In the past, guided by water, many literati and poets visited and gathered here,” said XL-Muse, and these regional infrastructural icons were “used to be the guiding factor of culture and commerce, and they represent that the bookstore is the bond between humans and books at the same time.”

The tunnel opens up into a vast library-worth realm of further reading in the cavernous interior, with architectural elements echoing the arches of the entry corridor. The rounded-and-arched theme is carried through in thin pillars and sloping displays.

Additional interior design dimensions come into play in themed reading spaces for children and adults, with starry ceilings and other humanizing elements. Here, furniture colors and shapes soften these spaces and make them more comfortable and inviting for longer-term occupation.

You can buy all kinds of weird things from vending machines these days – from live crabs to blue jeans to gold bars – but this new iteration is more entertaining than most, and it’ll certainly keep you busy longer than a bag of Skittles. Peruse the covers of a curated selection of books through the glass of these BooksActually vending machines in Singapore for a new distraction on demand. If only this idea caught on everywhere, maybe we’d spend a bit less time standing around staring at our phones.

Two of the machines are now ready for reading enthusiasts in high-traffic areas, including the National Museum of Singapore and the Singapore Visitor Center. Fittingly for these locations, the selections appear to be Singapore-centric, including books by local authors as well as helpful guides for tourists. Each machine contains about 150 books with up to 22 titles, and the outsides of the machines are painted by local artists to indicate what’s inside.

“The whole idea is about accessibility and eyeballs,” says Kenny Leck, owner of BooksActually. “There are not enough bookstores in Singapore… these vending machines could be a visual touchpoint. You may not buy [a book] but we’ll let you know these exist. And from there, there could be more possibilities. We start with visual awareness: books where you see a local author’s name. The ultimate place we want to put them are at train stations.”

Of course, book vending machines aren’t entirely new, though they’re far more popular in Asia than they are stateside. The first book-dispensing machine, called the Penguincubator, was installed in London way back in 1937. An Irish company called ‘A Novel Idea’ installed a machine at London’s Heathrow airport, but went out of business. It’s kind of hard to pick out a book when you can’t even read the back cover, but the concept could work with highly recognizable beach-read-type titles that are about the equivalent of junk food for your brain, anyway.