What do you do with your old books?

[quornflour]

I like buying books. I like the smell.
I am not a big fan of library books, I know, it is messed up but it is not going to change; I like to bend the binding which I will not do with a library book since sometimes pages get loose.
The trouble is I do not really like keeping the books after I read them. For some I like to give to someone I think would like it, or swap for a book they have read that I can bend as necessary.
I am thinking about setting up a section in my teams "technical" library for "bus books" to encourage folks on the team to share books.
I know some people who leave their books on the bus or in bars in hopes that someone else will find it and enjoy it.
I have also thought about donating them to a women's shelter.
What do you do with your books?

[Ads]

[happydaisydoo]

I feel quite the same way about new books. I love them. Anyway, I find myself with books I'm never going to read again all the time. I usually give mine to nursing or retirement homes and the library. I also give old magazines to the nursing home.

[Grungie]

Our local Half Price books buys used books (and CDs and records and plenty of other stuff, too.) My husband and I are book addicts, so we make periodic trips to thin out the collection. I have a lot of stuff that I think I may read again, but with mysteries in particular I don't see the point of rereading when you already know how it ends.

Depending on what you have, there's also always eBay. My husband made a nice chunk of change selling his old D&D stuff that way.

You could also donate to your local library. Our local library has a used book sale a couple of times a year to raise money.

[athena]

i used to feel the same way about the smell of library books, but i got over it. :-) the amount of money i have saved has been totally worth it. and if i want to read it again, i can just "visit" it at the library. however, i have never and will never break the binding on a book. that is my biggest pet peeve about readers and why i won't lend books to certain people. all the books i own and have read still look new. i just like my books that way.

for books i don't want anymore, either i give them to a friend or donate them someplace. i've donated to the salvation army, housingworks in nyc, and to a member of my knitting group for her church's weekly book sale to raise money for the soup kitchen and other programs. you could also give your books away on freecycle.

[april again]

I use Bookmooch and Paperbackswap very very frequently. I have gotten a lot of great books and swapped out more that I didn't want anymore. It has been great to move trade paperbacks and get good reference books in exchange!

[sallysunshine]

I lurve Housingworks with a passion. If I lived in NY, I would donate my books to Housingworks. I think the Housingworks bookstore may be my favorite bookstore in the world right now.

I've run across several charities that donate books to people in prison. When I worked at a bookstore, we collected books for a juvenile detention facility, and there's Chicago Books to Women in Prison. A lot of states have cut down on funding for prison libraries, which means that the only books that prisoners can get are sometimes books donated by religious organizations. (Nothing against that, but I'd be bummed if those were teh only books available to me.) Women's shelters are another good idea, and Goodwill and the like also accept books.

I'm really trying to cut down on my book-buying habit, but it's hard. I love the feeling of cracking open a new book.

[tropicalgem]

Well I'm a bit of a hoarder, so I mostly keep them, but If it beocmes too much, i'll just donate them to the library

[yardenxanthe]

Post them for sale on Amazon or Half.com. I just did that with my Harry Potter book and got about 75% of what I paid for it.

[porcelainpeonies]

I buy an immense amount of books probably 10-15 a month. I buy alot off of sale racks and after I read them if I like them I''ll keep them. If I don''t like them I sell them on Amazon. I have sold book fairly quickly on there. Amazon also has great bargain books as well.

[quaisior]

I used to sell on half.com and Amazon, but my sales dried up and right at that time, Paperback Swap came into being, so I joined there. Now I also trade on BookMooch and Title Trader.