My local library is great but I often have to wait for books to become available. Right now I’m trying to hurry through a book because it is due in a few days, I can’t renew it, and there is a long line of people waiting for it. This could be avoided with a service like BookSwim. I’ll have to check back in a couple months to see if their catalog improves.

My last place to give away was the Auxilliary House I stayed in when my husband was in the hospital a lot. They had a very small library of donated books. If you were reading one when it was time to go home, you could just take it home with you. I ended up giving them so many books that I more than doubled their library. They said if they ever got a complete room for it they would have to name it after us.

In total, I have given away more than 5k books and it has benefitted everyone. My library at home now has a maximum of about 1k in a lot of genre’s – Christian, sci fi, mystery, romance, self-help, biographies, etc. And I live in a 1k sq. foot trailer. Luckily we also have a room attached that is at the end of our carport. It also has lots of shelves.

And strangely enough, I am reading Swiss Family Robinson again. It is over the 50th time in 60 years. For some reason it touched a place in me and I cannot give it up. However, I did give a better copy to the Camel Library in Kenya. I forgot, I have been sending books there for the last 1 1/2 years. Look it up on the computer. It costs about $54 to send 20# of books, but I get the books at the $1 store, etc. It is wonderful helping children & adults learn to read.

I do subscribe to audible.com where I can get a new audiobook once every couple of months. But the book is mine. I own it. I don’t know about renting a physical book for a couple of reasons – I tend to book hop; at any point I can be reading 3-4 physical books and listening to an audiobook. I could have the book for months and months on end which would mean I not really getting the value out of my month subscription, plus when I’m done I have to return it. If i found it valuable I will no longer have it to reference or be able to loan it out should I decide to do that. Plus, the condition of the book would concern me – I like to keep my personal books in pristine, like new condition. I don’t like to read books with excessive writing, highlighting, underlining, or bent pages – it’s a little distracting to me. I think for physical books I’d like my own copies. But you could always use the rental service to “test drive” books before you buy them. If you find it valuable, something you would want to read again – buy it. If not, you don’t have to worry about having a book you could do without taking up valuable real estate on your bookshelf.

I will check out a book at the books store first and if it does not have enough info in it to convince me that it will be valuable in my library I just skip it and research the topic on the internet for free or find another book that IS a keeper.

I live in a small town with a small library and I have never used it for more than my kid’s books. I do go to their yearly purge sale and pick up tons of great stuff there – as well as old magazines WHICH I LOVE!! I cut out what I like and toss the rest. That way I can make theme books with ideas and tips – I just love it and I refer to tem often for ideas and inspiration.

Any movies I have rented from the library were usually unplayable. I would rather pay a bit for something that doesn’t aggravate me or wait till it comes out on TV and record it if I want to watch it again. When my kids were little even if we paid full price for a movie we got full value for it as we wore them out in no time – my kids just loved them!

I find that garage sales are awesome places for books and they are where I get 90 percent of the books I own. You can pick up even current release books that cost as much as $50 for about $2 to $5 dollars. Patience is the main ingredient there – you have to hunt for what you want – which is the fun of garage sales!

Finally – when I walk into a books tore and pay full price for a book I do not feel back about it in the least. I value the knowledge and information in the books and always use it to design a new jewelry item or fix something in my house (or my life!) that saves me WELL OVER what I paid for the book. They are, to me, an investment in the quality of my life – and a quality life is priceless!!

Now, you can only put 9 books on hold. Sounds like a lot? Not really. Right now, I am on a wait list for 9 books, each of which has over 100 people (some have 300 and up) waiting for a copy. At an average of two weeks per person, well, you do the math.

In the meantime, my hold list is tied up and I can’t add books that ARE available because I’d lose my place for those other 9 books.

Other factors: New books no longer get three weeks, they now get one or two weeks. This doesn’t work very well if you are taking out a number of books at a time (which I do, to make the best of the cost of going to/from the library–which is a minimum of $4.50 a visit and up). So you have to go back sooner.

Finally, the depth of books available seems to be far less. And unlike others mentioned here, there is no asking for a book from some other system or even for them to buy it.

The bottom line: We’re lucky to still have the library and have it open six days a week, albeit with shortened hours.

oh, and I live in a MAJOR city. Sometimes the suburbs is better.

I may look into the BookSwim option. If it has some of the books I want, it would be worthwhile, however, it’s also somewhat cheaper to see if I can get some of those same books from Paperbackswap.com, which, to me, remains the best option for a lot of things, especially if it’s a book you want to buy.

What I really miss are the stores that used to have informal “book clubs” and rented out popular fiction (new mostly) for something like $5 a month. They no longer exist, not to mention that all the used paperback book stores are now gone from the city (too expensive rents) and you’re forced to scrounge at Sal Army, which has raised their book costs and which is also raided regularly by people to get books to sell online (ebay, paperback) so the available stock is hugely diminished.

Now that people know they can sell stuff for less than they paid, it’s impossible to find either free or reasonably priced used books anywhere!

Late fees are small enough that I’d have to be very, very late or lose the books all together for the library to be less cost-efficient than Bookswim.

When my library doesn’t have a new book (or doesn’t have it available for a long time), I’m forced to either go to a bookstore and buy it or read it there. Or, I suppose, ILL it or request it and hope that the library gets it in at some point.

The tipping point for me with BookSwim would be condition of the books. I’m….lets say more then mildly OCD. Although my county has an exceptional library system, I’ve had plenty of experience with finding one only to find there were stains or damage that made it effectively unreadable for me. If I could be sure of better quality, heck yes I’d sign up, $30 a month would be cheap for nice, clean books. But until then, I’d rather play interlibrary loan roulette knowing that if there’s bubblegum wiped across the cover, at least I haven’t spent anything before I send it back.

The only downside I can think of is that losing a book would cost me $120 because of all the processing. I’ve also been fined 80 cents because a book from “my” library that I returned to the college was apparently not checked in properly by the college, and by the time it got back to “my” library, it was 4 days overdue. That shouldn’t happen again, because I now renew books to make sure there is at least a week left when I turn them back in.

I would encourage any avid reader to see what kind of interlibrary loan program might exist in their state.