“So long, and thanks for all the fish” is book num­ber four in Dou­glas Adams’ world-renowned six-part com­ic sci­ence fic­tion se­ries Hitch­hik­ers Guide to the Galaxy.

Each of the books in the Hitch­hik­ers Guide to the Galaxy se­ries has sold 15 mil­lion copies world­wide, has been trans­lat­ed in­to more than 30 dif­fer­ent lan­guages and has been adapt­ed in­to stage shows, com­ic books, TV se­ries, com­put­er games.

A movie called Hitchik­ers Guide to the Galaxy was al­so made.

On Wednes­day, the first day of the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, I was able to get a copy of “So long, and thanks for all the fish” free of charge.

No strings at­tached.

The rea­son I was able to get the book was be­cause of the For The Love Of Read­ing TT team.

For The Love For Read­ing TT al­lows any­body to take a book for free.

The team has set up two ta­bles out­side the en­trance of the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (Nalis) in Port-of-Spain for the du­ra­tion of the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest for that sole pur­pose.

“We col­lect do­nat­ed books and then we dis­trib­ute them at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions in Trinidad,” Aara Cleghorn said.

Apart from the tem­po­rary ta­bles set up for the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, For The Love of Read­ing TT has six book cor­ners set up at var­i­ous busi­ness places around the coun­try.

“We have a pop-up shelf so you can pick up a book, it is free so peo­ple come they browse the shelf, we have non-fic­tion, we have fic­tion, peo­ple just take a book and go, there are no strings at­tached,” Cleghorn said.

Among the books on their ta­bles on Wednes­day were a hard­cov­er copy of Al­le­giant by Veron­i­ca Roth, Richard III by William Shake­speare and The Danc­ing Wu Li Mas­ters by Gary Zukav.

“You don’t have to pay any­thing, you don’t have to sign up, you don’t have to reg­is­ter, you don’t have to bring a book in ex­change, you nev­er have to bring it back, we just en­cour­age peo­ple to get in­to that sense of com­mu­ni­ty where you give a book with­out ex­pect­ing any­thing in re­turn and that means that oth­er peo­ple can then take it with­out hav­ing to give any­thing back,” she said.

The team’s first book cor­ner was opened in April last year, and so far thou­sands of books have al­ready been ex­changed in that time.

Cleghorn said For The Love of Read­ing has three main goals.

“The main goal is to en­cour­age read­ing. You might not be able to af­ford to buy a new book every week but then if you know you have a book cor­ner right around the cor­ner from you where you are you know you can go and pick up a book,” Cleghorn said.

Cleghorn said some peo­ple use the space as their own “per­son­al li­brary” tak­ing books one week and re­turn­ing them.

She said the pur­pose is not to re­place book­stores and li­braries, but rather to en­sure that every­one has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to read.

“It means that you are nev­er re­strict­ed then by your fi­nan­cial sta­tus or any­thing like that, you don’t have to re­ly on be­ing able to af­ford it every­body should be able to read,” she said.

Cleghorn said the sec­ond goal is to build a sense of com­mu­ni­ty.

“It is about that sense of giv­ing with­out ex­pect­ing in re­turn. A lot of peo­ple are just so amazed that peo­ple would give with­out ex­pect­ing pay­ment or with­out ex­pect­ing that you have to give a book in re­turn,” she said.

She said the third goal is about en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“We know there is a lot of talk about be­ing aware of our en­vi­ron­ment try­ing to go ze­ro waste and we are to­tal­ly on board with that we know that a lot of ex­tra re­sources al­ready ex­ist so peo­ple have a bunch of books on their shelves and it may be that you nev­er read some of them again so we en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple in­stead of throw­ing away books you don’t want or burn­ing them as we know peo­ple do here, give them to some­body else,” Cleghorn said.

“Or if you have a book­shelf and the sole pur­pose is just to look at it let some­body use it, pick a few books, we are not ask­ing you to give up your whole col­lec­tion, look at your col­lec­tion see what books you may be will­ing to part with and give some­body else so what al­ready ex­ists can be used in­stead of mak­ing it that every­body goes out and buys new books and cre­ates that de­mand for more trees to be cut down,” she said.

Cleghorn said peo­ple bring box loads of books for them.

“We try to re­cy­cle some of the old books, we send to Ace Re­cy­cling what­ev­er we can­not re­pair but we try to reuse,” Cleghorn said.

The For The Love Of Read­ing TT sign that was hung out­side Nalis was made from old book pages.

Cleghorn’s hair clip and name tag were al­so used from old book pages.