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What do you do with all those books ....

I'm the first to admit I get a lot of books ... A hell of a lot of books for review and I love that I get them. I do try to read the majority of them and I'd say that 95% of the time I succeed in this.

So what do I do with them all?

I'm now at the point where I can't keep every single book I've read. We have a library at home where I have 3 bookcases to myself (along with a shared adult case and a shared children's case). I'm now at the point where those shelves are almost full. I've now started to be harsh and say to myself that if a book didn't get a more than fours stars I don't keep it (unless it is part of a series). This isn't to say that I still don't have a huge amount of books at home.

I now have a few things I do with all the books that I don't want to keep or that I get doubles of (I am naughty for buying hardbacks / finished copies of books I liked even if I don't need them).

  • Give them to my blogging friends. I love doing this especially when it is a surprise. I always joke about how when I visit London for a blog event I am often tortoise like with my backpack weighed down with books for everyone.
  • Give them to my friends. I have friends who read but would never willing buy YA titles. I am working on them one at a time to change their minds.
  • Give them to the kids at school. I know individual kids who read and read and read. I often take in piles of books for them. 
  • Have them in my classroom. Anything historical is brilliant for my classroom. I'm trying to specialise a bit and have titles which are linked into my curriculum but it's proving hard to do!
  • Give them to the school library. I am now taking piles of books in. A little bit inside me loves doing this because the lady who runs the library doesn't know her YA as well as I do and she loves getting books she knows the kids will read. Obviously this only works with finished copies.
  • Form time reading. This is my newest idea. On a Monday I take a form group. They have to be engaged in something quiet so I can go round and do aall the jobs I need to do. I therefore decided to take in a selection of titles I'd had for review and liked so I could recommend them to particular kids. I'm actually quite impressed as I've managed to get a few kids hooked (one year 8 girl with Skin Deep by Laura Jarratt and one year 11 boy with Naked by Kevin Brooks). I keep mixing it up and bringing different ones in. It's interesting to see which kids go for which books and working out which ones they like because as much as I like reading YA they are the intended audience and I like seeing how they go down. I'd also say their choices so far actually blow theories about award winning books out of the window in some cases.

Comments

Chrystal said…
I love all of the ways you share your books. I have traded with friends/bloggers in the past. I have been debating on cleaning out my shelves this summer and donating a bunch to one of the schools in a less well off neighbourhood. I have a feeling that they could use the pick me up. ;)
Anonymous said…
I really like your idea of form time reading. I wish someone had done that in our school when I was in high school!
M said…
You do some really lovely things with your books. It always surprises me that some (of course not all!) school librarians don't seem to engage existing and/or potential readers very well. And you must be a bit like a teen santa for your form class! Little M would love that - it'd add a bit of anticipation and surprise. If we travel anywhere, we leave some books behind or give them to local libraries that lack funds because books overseas can be extortionately priced in some countries.
Leanna Elle said…
I like to share the book love too by passing books on to blogger friends, although this usually means my postage costs are huge since everything I send is overseas, so I have to keep that in check!

I donate books to charity when I can too, although the last time I called in with a bag of books they turned me away saying they didn't accept books. :(

I have books stuck in every nook and cranny at this stage. I'm running out of space!!