Monday, February 22, 2010

addicted to mooching

Mooching can be fun! Well, it ends up being more like "trading" than mooching, but it can get quite addictive.

As many of my regular blog readers know, I read quite a bit (trying to hit that 50 books read in one year goal again!) and buying new books can be quite hard on the wallet. And I love "owning" my books, so I tend not to go to the library very often (although I know I should). Besides, whenever I go, they either don't have the book I want or the waiting list is about 100 people long!

Anyhow, there must be lots of other people who feel the same way because I've discovered "BookMooch"! Basically, it's an online site that lets you give away books you no longer want/need (people "mooch" them from you), get points for books you give away and redeem those points to "mooch" books from others! Yes, you do have to cover the cost of postage, which can be expensive for heavier books, but sending things via surface mail helps keep that down (plus you can choose where you want to send books - within your own country only or internationally).

Anyhow, I've already mooched a few books and am waiting for them to arrive, meanwhile I've already sent some books out to other countries. The best thing is discovering new titles, and meeting other book lovers.


Illustration credit Andrice Arp, courtesy of BookMooch.com

1 comment:

Suziesaurus said...

Hey, that's a pretty cool site!