Friday, April 24, 2009

A Free Education and Year of Entertainment in One Hour

I am a different kind of person when I’m reading a good book. No line at the grocery store, hour in a waiting room, or evening spent watching my husband channel surf is wasted, or begrudged- I have my book, and need nothing else.

The problem is, I don’t always have that good book, and so live in a state of mild discontent and wasted time until someone comes along with a good recommendation, or suddenly reach a breaking point where I grab my keys and my wallet and drive to Barnes and Noble, sanctimoniously turning down their offer to become a “member” for $25 extra for the third time this month because I “never come here.”

There is a better way, and it takes less than an hour and can cost nothing.

We just need a plan.

There is a free, fabulous education out there that will turn us into the best-read person we know and fill every minute of down-time in our lives with life-changing wisdom and entertainment. And all we need to do to get it is spend the next hour doing the following steps:

1. Gather up all the used paperbacks in our house, and put them in a box or paper grocery bag.

2. Locate a used book store in our city

3. Create a LIST of all the books we’d like to read, and print it out. The older the book, the more likely we’ll find it.

Here are some lists I’ve found:

For all those books we should have read in school but didn’t:

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/plan/boost-your-skills/23628.html

http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

Or just to catch up on Oprah’s book club:

http://bestsellers.about.com/od/oprahsbookclub/a/oprah_book_list.htm

If we’d like to get our children in on the action:

http://kids.nypl.org/reading/recommended2.cfm?ListID=61

http://www.teachersfirst.com/100books.cfm


4. Now take our trade-ins to the used bookstore, open an account, and while they’re sorting through our books, hit the aisles with that list! Don’t be surprised when they give some books back- just find a place to donate them later.


Now…we should have an amazing stack of hours and hours of reading sitting by our beds, ready to be grabbed. When we get through it, we’ll go back to the bookstore, trade them in, and start all over.

Of course, the library is always there, too.

Now what else do we need to get us through the next year? Just a good cup of coffee or glass of wine, depending on the time of day, and we’re golden.
-TWM

3 comments:

Keith and Kathryn said...

New poster (and book lover) here. :)
Another source to try is paperbookswap.com. If you haven't discovered it yet, go check it out. I have saved so much money and my shelves stay de-cluttered. My favorites get to stay and the others get shared with someone else.

TheWastelessMom said...

Thank you, keith and kathryn! Great tip!

Llonnie Granic said...

Thank you, keith and kathryn! Great tip!