A Really Good Idea: Netflix for Books

It's difficult to think of any one thing or activity in life that is 100 percent positive.  Everything, no matter how seemingly wonderful, has a downside, doesn't it?  If asked to name something free of drawbacks, some might offer "friends" as an answer and granted, friends wouldrank pretty high on the list of life's greatest aspects, but then there's always that one pal who wants to borrow (and never return) your garden tools.  So, moving on.... How about "love?"  Nah, the dark side of that is all too obvious.   Sex?  Even that, has its non-ecstasy side (to say nothing of the potential consequences).  Children? Aaccckk! Even my beloved canines are not completely without some negatives (chewed up sneakers, to name but one).

But I find there is one thing that is ridiculously pleasurable, very inexpensive, mind-expanding and while certainly addictive, not medically threatening.  Reading. I am willing to pronounce that there are noreal disadvantages to reading.  (Yeah, yeah, if you read too much, you might not get your bathrooms clean or neglect dead heading the spent blooms on the petunias, but all in all, you must admit: Reading is the penultimate pastime. (No disrespect intended for sports, employment, dining, sleeping or any of the lesser endeavors of life).

Given this honored status as life's best activity, one must always be on the lookout for ways in which to increase one's own reading as well as to promote reading among the masses. One of my all-time favorite methods of snagging a cache of new reading material on the cheap is to find one of those articles in the newspaper entitled something like "What the authors are reading?" or "Ten top smart people share their favorite books."  From these articles, I invariably find 5 or 6 titles that pique my interest.  And then, the hunt is on.  I look at prices on Amazon.com as a starting point.  Then move to Half.com and other used book sites.  Finally, I check out Ebay.  My goal is to purchase all the books (including shipping) I've targeted for less than the full boat retail price of just one book (usually about $20 to $25).  Almost without fail, I can roundup an armload of reading in no time.

I used to want to keep a copy of every book I read. Silly me, I expected to be re-reading and referring to them constantly.  The house got crowded. Fast. Even the floor to ceiling bookshelves were imploring me to stop acquiring. So now I freely share the best reads with friends and resell or give away the others. 

And once I renounced my possessive ways, I learned to love the cheapest of all ways to feed a reading habit: a library card.  The advantages to libraries, beyond the price, is you get to handle and inspect and read snatches at random before bringing the books home.  A visit to a library will always result in more and more importantly, differentbooks than you would get for yourself online. Libraries make one's book selections more expansive, I think.  You walk down one aisle, headed for the newest Toni Morrison and you pass the nonfiction American history section and the gilt lettering on the spine of "Founding  Brothers" calls to you.  Never have I left the library with just the book(s) I came to find.

However, libraries do have some negatives.  Popular books often are waitlisted (and patience in this case is not one of my virtues) and then there's that "return date" thing. And the late fees. I read a lot, but not on a time schedule so I don't take kindly to having to return books by a particular day. 

So, imagine my delight in discovering a whole different way of feeding my reading habit. BookSwim and Booksfree are online book rental and delivery services. Here’s how it works: Readers order books online and receive them through the mail. They can choose among plans that would allow them to receive from two to 11 books at a time. These books can be kept for as long as the reader likes with no late fees.  When finished with at least two books, the reader sends them back in a pre-paid return bag that comes with every shipment.  Readers who fall in love with their books have the option to buy them. (About a third of the books shipped out are brand new – the others are “pre-read.”)

There are different membership levels, depending on how many books you want to have out a one time.  $20 a month will get you three books at a time and you can return them for new titles as many times a month as you'd like.  Obviously. the more you read, the better the deal this is.  Bookswim seems to have many more titles in hardback and paperback, while Booksfree concentrates on paperbacks and audio cds. You can buy memberships as gifts and BookSwim plants trees for every gift card sold.

Netflix for books. What a great idea.  Read.

Comments

[DR. LARRY MITCHELL]

Um, I think that the library already exists. You can request any book you want, and you can even take out more than three at a time.

[Janis]

Um, I think that I addressed the idea of libraries in the post, noting not only how wonderful they are, but also pointing out the drawbacks -- popular books are often waitlisted and there are those pesky "due dates." Reading the whole post tends to increase the value of one's comments.