This Illiterate Brazilian's Home Speaks Volumes - Yahoo! News

This Illiterate Brazilian's Home Speaks Volumes - Yahoo! News: "The Brazilian government has launched a series of initiatives to improve the situation, including a reduction in taxes on books, a 'Hungry for Books' reading drive and a campaign to establish public libraries in all towns and cities.
Leite couldn't wait.
'Those of us who grew up here, we know what the needs of the community are,' he said. 'I stopped and thought, 'Wait a minute. There's not a single library. The schools have libraries, but there's no public library.' So I said, 'Let's make this dream come true.' '
When he asked members of his small bicycling group to help him collect used books, 'they all thought I was a little crazy,' he said.
But they humored him, and the nameless cycling club got a moniker: 'The Madmen of Sao Goncalo.' Or so they seemed at first to the neighbors whose doors they knocked on.
'Some people thought, 'You must be joking. Here in this community, people ask for clothes, but to ask for books!' ' said Ronaldo Pena, 48, one of the cyclists.
They inaugurated the library on March 20, 2004, with 100 volumes, most of them literary and historical treatises donated by someone Pena knew. Since then, the group has been amassing books at a feverish pace. Many come from rich Brazilians in whose homes they work as cleaners, handymen and the like.
Because everything is by donation, the collection is eclectic and quixotic, but impressive in scope: from Shakespeare to Agatha Christie, Umberto Eco to political theorist Antonio Gramsci, William Faulkner to James Joyce, not to mention textbooks and reference works. There's no Dewey decimal system, or even strict alphabetical order; books are s"