I was happy to find myself thinking, 'I want to do this too'

In the spring of 2026, I encountered a shared bookshelf.

A little before that, I had heard from my family about a new facility at Nagoya University called Common Nexus (which I will refer to as Comone).
They told me about it along with a brochure, saying, 'You seem like you'd like this,' and I had been curious and wanted to go.

On a Saturday in February,
I had to go out in a hurry to deliver something a family member had forgotten.
Feeling it would be a waste to just go home after that,
I thought I would stop by Comone as well,
and that was my first encounter with it.

At ROOTS BOOKS inside Comone,
I learned about participatory bookshelves (hereinafter referred to as shared bookshelves) for the first time and looked at the shelves of various shelf owners.

I could feel the thoughts and feelings of each shelf owner in every single shelf.
It was like love at first sight; I just thought, 'I love this!'

A shelf lined with someone's favorite books
is not just a place where books are placed,
but a place where you can feel that person's presence and their gaze toward the things they love, which was truly wonderful.

And then,
'I want to be a shelf owner too'
I thought immediately.
It was like, this is what I wanted to do!

The fact that this feeling welled up so naturally
was a little surprising even to me.

Deep down,
I felt like I had given up on the idea that
such a spark of passion would ever light up inside me again.

But as I looked at the shelves one by one,
I felt the feeling of
'I want to try this too'
welling up within me.

Moreover, it
didn't end as just a passing thought in that moment.

Even after I got home,
the feeling didn't cool down at all.
Rather, as time passed,
it gradually grew stronger.

Looking at my own bookshelf,
the time I spent thinking,
'Which books should I put there?'
'What kind of shelf do I want it to be?'
was truly enjoyable.

I kept picking out the books I wanted to place there.
The books that had been sleeping on my shelf for a long time without moving
seemed to feel a fresh breeze and come back to life.

The books that had been silent and unmoved on my home bookshelf for so long
felt like they were happily calling out to me,
'I'm here,'
'I'm here too.'

The time I spent thinking about which books to place
felt less like just doing the work of selecting books,
and more like reuniting with the books after a long time.

Ah, I realized once again
that I loved books this much.

Reading books.
Thinking about books.
Arranging my favorite books as if handing them to someone.
Connecting with someone through books.

The feeling of wanting to do those things,
the passion to want to do it strongly,
was born in me again,
and I was happy.

Just around that time, work was in a busy period,
so I couldn't go to register right away,
and I actually went to register
in March.

But that waiting time wasn't bad either.

Precisely because I couldn't start right away,
I could think over and over,
'Which books should I place?' 'This one is good, that one is good too,'
and I was excited the whole time.

I kept writing down the things I thought of in a notebook,
and it quickly filled up several pages.

Even though I hadn't even started yet,
I was already having fun.

In March, I finally went to register with the books I wanted to place.

I thought, the day has finally come.

The books I chose
would be lined up in a place other than my bookshelf at home. The fact that someone might pick them up.

It was a little strange,
but I was very excited.

By trying to start as a shelf owner of a shared bookshelf, new things I wanted to do came up one after another. Ever since I encountered ROOTS BOOKS, it felt like a new breeze was blowing inside me.

*The 'Comone' written here refers to Common Nexus (ComoNe).
The official website is here.
https://comone.thers.ac.jp/