The Blonde Diaries

I am an avid reader. I absolutely love to read just about anything. My absolute favorite genres are classics like Bronte and Austen and then chick lit.  Luckily when I go to the book store the classics are all usually in the $6-$8 range per book.  The chick lit books though are a totally different story.  I find the cheapest of those to be $13 and then they go up for soft covers!  Its really hard for me to justify buying a new author because I have been burned by so many that feel that all you need to do is write about 300 pages, include a loopy girl as the main character, a crappy or good boyfriend, and then put a pretty cover on the book in a bright color with swirly writing and that’s it.

So I’ve decided to look for alternative ways to read books.  There are some that I buy no matter what because I love the author and series/story line.  For those books I’ll usually venture to Borders or put them in my book queue at Book of the Month Club 2 (formerly Zooba) for $9.99 (hardbacks and free shipping!).  For others that I’m not sure about I use to do amazon.com used books but then I’d end up paying shipping and being left with stacks of books that I don’t have space for.

I started looking for new avenues.  The first one I found that I thought was really cool was the used book sale at my local library.  The library holds the sale the last Saturday of the month and they sell the donated used books for 25 cents (small paperbacks) or $1 (hard cover or large paperbacks).  I was shocked at how many chick lit books they had the other day.  I was able to walk out with 4 for $4 instead of $52!  Now this is also awesome because I now have a place to donate them when I am done.  I tried selling on amazon.com and half.com but the hassle of going to the post office and the fact that there are major sellers on there selling my books for pennies just isn’t worth it to me.

The other thing I read about today which I had no idea about and want to try is a site where you can swap books with other book fans.  I found a blog post about it on Janet’s Book Nook today where you can read all about it yourself Want to get rid of those old books? If you have used this service and have any experiences with them let me know by leaving a comment.

Tags: book swap, Books, budget reading, Budgeting, used books