Dollar Stretching Saturday: Cheap Books

Books are so good for the kids - and so good for parents, too. But, let's face it, buying books gets expensive. There's always the library, but unless you live in a large city, your local library may not have the most extensive offerings. You can try the inter-library loan process for specific titles you'd like to read, but I'm sure my library isn't the only one that pooh-poohs this process as being too time consuming for the librarians. What you might not know is there are other options for buying books cheaply - or even getting them for free. Here are some of my favorites:

* Thrift stores. You can find many like-new books for a dollar or two at thrift stores. I've found that some thrift stores are far more reasonable than others, so don't give up after checking out a single store. I highly recommend St. Vincent DePaul's. * BookMooch. This is an online book exchange I simply love. It's free to become a member. Just input books you'd like to get rid of and mail them out at book rate when you receive a request for one or more. You can browse other members' books, or search for specific titles, and upon request, they'll be sent the book(s) to you free of charge. I've had nothing but excellent experiences with this group. * PaperBackSwap. This is like BookMooch, but with more rules. Many members seem to feel books should be sent out immediately, so if that's not reasonable for you, stick to BookMooch. * Gutenberg. If you don't mind reading books on a computer screen, this site offers over 30,000 completely free books. * Other ways I haven't tried. Over at ZenHabits, there's a nice list of other resources for cheap or free books that I personally haven't tried. Bookmark and Share

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