books
The Universe lets me know what I should be reading-at least that's the way it seems. Library sales, thrift store, books jump out at me as I run my fingers quickly over the spines. No, they don't literally JUMP OUT, my fingers just stop upon the ones that turn out to be of interest, whether to me or the various people I share books with
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If there is a senior center in town, they might be open to running a book exchange.
The VA hospital has several racks of paperbacks around for patients and visitors to help themselves- they are donated books.
You could ask people on craigslist to donate books for your exchange.
I visited a health food store in a small NM town years ago. It was in an old house. Several large rooms had been converted to different purposes. One was a health food store. One was a B'hai center. One was a drugstore.
In the hallway was a large bookcase, maybe 12 feet wide and 6 feet tall. It was full of books, mostly paperbacks. It was a self-service paperback book exchange. You would take a book and leave a book AND a quarter. Since it was right outside the drugstore, I guess they looked after it and used to quaters to replace books that wore out.
One user had left a note, "If you TAKE a WESTERN, LEAVE a Western".
I suspect male readers were frustrated when too many romances filled the shelves.
Perhaps you could start a tiny book exchange in your own apartment complex. Is there a laundry room?
Could you put a bookcase, or even a laundry basket of books in any communal room with a note about leaving their old book and taking a new one? Maybe your neighbors would like to save money on books, too.
Or you could sit outside on a warm day where there's more activity (Saturday? sunday?) with a basket or box flats of books and tell people you'd like to exchange books and do they have any cluttering up their place?
Good way to meet your neighbors. Once you have some children's books in the collection, you could read to stray children.
I once read a magazine article about little take a book, leave a book libraries in a cupboard type arrangement that people set up on a post outside their houses- a sort of tiny neighborhood library. There's one in the block behind a convenience store in a town I visit occasionally.
I think Guidepost magazine had building inmstructions for them years ago-if you know someone who likes to build stuff.
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