Five Ways to Recycle Your Books

I have two passions when it comes to Books – 1) Reading books and 2) Collecting Books.

I also prefer reading physical copies of books and so you can imagine, there will always come a day when you realise you’ve filled up your bookshelf to the brim and are in danger of having to sit on your books or sleep on your books.

So, us readers and collectors come up with ways to recycle the love of our lives – our books, and here are some of the ways I recycle my books 🙂

Book exchanges – Well, this one doesnt actually solve the problem of space utilisation, because you get a book in return, but isn’t it a great way to save money and read physical copies of the books you’ve wanted to read??
Sell them at discounted rates – I tried my hand at this recently and was amazed at how many takers there were for my used books! It makes me really happy to know that I’ll be able to send some of my beloved books to homes where they will be cherished and read. And making some money on the side so you can buy more books? Win-Win! I still have to figure out the logistics of shipping and packaging, but I think it will be worth the effort 🙂
Donate your books at your local Library – I used to do this before I had the idea of trying to sell my books. I donated a lot of my books to the local library when we moved from UK to India. And last year I had donated almost ten books to the local Library here in Pune as well. The best part about donating books to a Library is that you know they will be read by someone one day and you get a sense of having done some charity in whatever small way possible. Also, Libraries are not picky about what books you decide to donate, as long as they’re in a decent condition 🙂
Give them to friends to promote reading or lend them to budding readers – I usually do this with the more common or more commercial books that I own and not my cherished ones. Its because most of the times I’ve noticed, a book lent is a book gone. At least I’ve never got my books back, when I lend it to people. So now, I just give them away to my friends or budding readers who want to try out reading but are not ready for the heavy stuff 🙂
Become a Book Fairy!! – I am a proud Book Fairy (which is a global initiative), and we have many similar initiatives in India as well such as BooksOnMetro in Delhi, and BooksOnTheMove (in multiple cities). So you basically sign up as a volunteer or a book fairy and you get your starter kit – which can be stickers or bookmarks or ribbons or notes or wrapping paper to add on the books. Then you go to any Public space and leave the book behind at a place of your choosing with a note, to forward the love of reading to whoever picks it up. You can tag yourself on social media while leaving the books behind as well. I love this concept and have left a few books around in UK and India with a note. I did go back to check if the book was still around, and the book was gone!! I just hope it found a happy home 🙂

So, those are some of the ways I recycle my books 🙂 I’m still looking for more options to recycle books so that other readers can read them too – any ideas or suggestions? What do you do to recycle your books? 🙂