Thrift Books

I haven't done a book club in several years, the last one I was in we read through the Chronicles of Narnia (my 3rd time, I love them!) and Anna Karenina. When our friend Michele mentioned wanting to start up another one, we thought it would be fun to do it again. They book that was decided on was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and we didn't already own a copy of it. The idea was to do this as cheaply as possible, since we've decided to save where we can and not purchase items like this on a regular basis. Since the book is about 450 pages and we needed to read it in a little over a month, we figured we'd each need our own copy. We decided to join the DeKalb County Library (though Jamie ended up actually already having a card she forgot about) so we could just check the book out for free! Well, when we went, they only had something like 2 copies in the whole county and there were 4 other people waiting to check them out. It would have been October before we could possibly get them. (This all seemed strange to me, the book came out in the 40s, why are so many people wanting to read it at the same time?)

So now we needed to purchase two copies, but wanted to do it as cheaply as possible. I had recently heard of a new website from a friend called ThriftBooks.com. They are an online used bookstore, that often sells books for really cheap.

When I say cheap, I mean for a penny! They have a good number of books, ranging from several dollars down to a penny. They have different ratings for the quality of the books (New, Like New, Very Good, Good, and Acceptable) and the price is based on that as well. They get their books from bookstores, libraries, wholesalers and publishing houses, so they are able to offer them at deep discounts. We were able to find two copies of the book we needed, both priced at a penny, one was listed as good and one at acceptable. My main/only complaint about the service is the shipping, there was only one option for shipping and it was $3.95 per book ($3.45 per additional book from the same warehouse - which is listed next to each book). At the time we ordered, they didn't offer any different options, only US mail. Apparently now though they have expedited shipping as well. For the standard option though, it can take up to 21 business days to receive it, even though they supposedly ship within 1 to 2 days of ordering. One of our books even came from Atlanta and it still took over a week and a half to get here. I can mail a letter to someone and it will get there within 2 or 3 days at the most. This just didn't make sense to me. We weren't in that big of a rush, so it really didn't matter, just something to remember for next time.

The books arrived and we were excited to see that they were both in good condition. There hasn't been any noticeable writing in it, the covers are fully intact and look good with the exception of the spine having cracks/wear on it, but that is no big deal. So we ended up being able to get both books for about $8.50, which I was pretty excited about! Now we just have to read them in time to talk about it with everyone!