Reading, who would of thought that paperback books would be $7.95 and up? That gets to be expensive when you go through 2-3 a month, and, if you are like me you can’t wait for the book to move from hardcover to paperback so you buy the hardcover for $24.95 and up. So you end up with a bookshelf full of books that you’ve read once and some that you want to keep for awhile.
A couple of years ago my family and I visited Seattle, and the Pacific Northwest, specifically the Olympic Peninsula. While driving around the peninsula we got to see the effects of clear cutting first hand. It was like someone took a big razor and just ran it up the hillside, we vowed right then and there to reduce our paper usage.
For a while we used our Palm Pilots with e-reader software and downloaded our books. But there is just something about having a book in your hands, the feel and smell of the paper just cannot be replaced.
Back to the present, my daughter is just learning how to read, my wife and I still enjoy books but it is getting too expensive, and we have piles of books on the bookshelf. We’ve started sharing books among friends, and we trade our books in at a second hand bookstore. The second hand bookstore is a sham, we found out that they buy every book everyone brings them for pennies each. If they need the book they’ll put it on their shelves, if not, they rip the cover off and throw them in the dumpster. That’s not our idea of reusing something.
So Saturday we decided to do something different, we went to the library and got our library cards. I haven’t had one of those since I was in college and I had forgotten what it is like just to browse around, find the book you want and check it out for a couple of weeks. The library is no more of a hassle than running down to the local bookstore, and best of all it’s free and we don’t have to find a way to exchange or gift our old books.
So save some money and some trees, and take yourself to the library.
