Finding pre-loved books for my book club

I have just joined a book club.  I am pleased because it is something that I have been considering doing for awhile.  I waited to see if an opportunity arose for me to join one organically.  Then I considered starting one as a way to keep up with my friends regularly.  Mr Fix It pointed out (quite diplomatically!) that it might be better to join a book club and see if I like it before I take on the responsibility of organising one.

The stars finally aligned - I checked Gumtree and there was a (convenient!) book club looking for people.

Since there is the potential for needing to buy a lot of new books as part of this hobby I am determined to do everything that I can to re-use, borrow and salvage books each month.  I have built confidence by finding secondhand copies of the first two books that we are reading fairly easily.

The first two book club books successfully found secondhand

The first book is The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes.  I am about one chapter in and I am worried it might be too scary for me.  I am also, luckily, intrigued to find out what happens.  It's good to have the book club meeting coming up to help me find energy and motivation to read on and finish it.

When searching for a copy of Shining Girls I checked my local libraries online catalogue to see if they had it.  It was on loan (possibly to other members of the group!).  I decided to get creative and check the library catalogues of two neighbouring Councils.  Both had it.  I was extremely pleased with myself.  I had a dentist appointment near one of the neighbouring Council's libraries and collected it at the same time.  Success!

The second book is my selection.  Eeek! I had arranged with a friend to pop around and raid her book collection to choose something.  For some reason it was feeling a little too difficult and the book needs to be selected soon to give members enough lead time to find and read it before the end of March.  I have been keeping an eye out for ideas and had noted down a couple of potential books that I wanted to research further to see if I liked the look of them, and check their secondhand availability, before I decided.

Then I had the greatest idea.  I read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseini last year.  It was brilliant.  I thought this would be a great excuse to reread it.  I decided to see if my local Book Exchange, where I recently dropped off used books and received a credit, had it.  I'm pleased to say that the Book Exchange did have it and so I grabbed the copy (since I had given the copy I read last year to my mum).  As such, that is the book I have chosen for the group to read.  I hope they all like it as much as I did.  It's great if you can impress as the new kid on the block.

Do you have hobbies that lend themselves to re-using materials, borrowing things or salvaging items? Does that add to your interest in them?