Apartment Therapy Re-Nest | Look! Community Book Exchange

Look! Community Book Exchange

You give, you take, everybody reads! Sitting amongst all the other newspaper boxes, we spotted this newspaper box - turned - library down the street from our house. If your friends don't host book exchange, here's an alternative way to swap with your community.

Every once in a while you'll see people rummaging through to find a new read, or someone dropping off their own books. It probably doesn't hurt either that this "branch" is in front of a favorite neighborhood bookstore, Quimby's.
This is a genius way to distribute items and we could see this system being used for other things such as previously read newspapers (obviously) and magazines; used clothes; and old movies and music - anything that can easily fit in the box.

After telling one of our friends about this, they said they also have one in their neighborhood, Logan Square, and they use it all the time. Does anyone have something like this in their community? If not, maybe you could start one!

Comments (5)

The grocery store in the community adjacent to mine, has a book exchange. They have a bookcase decorated with the book exchange books! It sits next to the cafe tables. Brilliant! I always look through there.

posted by SoSue on October 30th 2008 at 11:21am
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Oh, I love this idea of a book exchange in a newspaper box too. Is there much maintenance from having people throw junk into it?

posted by SoSue on October 30th 2008 at 11:23am
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Our public library has a shelf of free books and a stand for free magazines. I drop off magazines there a lot. I use bookmooch for book exchange, though.

posted by Jezebella on October 31st 2008 at 4:36pm
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Love it! When I moved, I couldn't sell all of my books, so I stuffed most of them in exchange box in Logan Square... I loved watching people pick out books while I had coffee at Lula.

posted by DrePacific on November 3rd 2008 at 9:06am
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I used to volunteer at a library's fundraising bookstore and I think we still keep the freebie shelf going... At work, people just leave books and mags in the breakroom.

I suspect the Petrol Station coffeeshop downtown would let you exchange their books, if you asked.

posted by whytephoenix on November 4th 2008 at 10:53am
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