Books and Boats: Now There’s a Floating Library in Los Angeles

Lung-choking smog, Kardashians, a huge homeless population, bad traffic, and a methane-spewing natural-gas leak. There are plenty of things Los Angeles is known for, but being a hotbed of literacy isn’t usually one of them. However, a pop-up art-book installation floating just northwest of Downtown L.A. in the city’s Echo Park Lake is proving that when it comes to libraries, if you build it, people will come.

“Holy crap, everyone is excited about it! I wasn’t expecting this level of media attention,” the creator of the Floating Library, Minnesota-based artist and writer Sarah Peters, wrote in an email to TakePart.

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On Thursday, Peters set up a custom-made eight-by-eight-foot wooden raft that comes equipped with shelves on the sides. The reading material on the Floating Library includes nearly 80 handmade books created by both local and national artists and authors.

“What the Floating Library does is introduce people to the idea of a book as a work of art,” Peters wrote. “All of the books in this library are made by artists—they take unusual forms sometimes and have unusual content. They are my favorite art form (I’m also a book maker), and I love seeing people discover new ways of ‘seeing’ books.”

For the past three years, Peters has set up similar floating libraries across Minnesota, and she has good reason to bring the project to the West Coast. “Well, I live in Minnesota, where it is 10 degrees in February,” she joked over email. But there’s also a practical reason she came to the City of Angels and specifically to Echo Park, a hilly, majority Latino neighborhood.

Peters came to L.A. as a guest of Machine Project, “a storefront artist space for crazy projects just down the street from the park.” Defying the Angelenos-don’t-read stereotype, Machine Project produced the library project, built the raft, and connected Peters “to folks in the L.A. art-book world,” she wrote.

The City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks runs a boathouse on the lake, where people can rent two-person pedal boats for $10. That means folks who want to check out the Floating Library also get in a bit of exercise. People can borrow a zine or book of poetry to read as they paddle around the lake. “I love Los Angeles and find it to be a vibrant and creative space where people are willing to do strange things like pedal-boat to a library,” wrote Peters.

“I also believe deeply that creativity is necessary for a better society. The Floating Library encourages this for the artists submitting books as well as the patrons who are inspired by what they find on the Library,” she added. Although this installation in Echo Park Lake ends on Sunday, Peters hopes that projects such as this will help people reconnect with books and reflect on how libraries should grow and change to meet the needs of society.

“I’m a fan of all kinds of libraries, reading, and literacy as a way of improving our lives and setting the foundation for democracy. Knowledge is empowerment!” she wrote.