I didn’t get up a #thriftingthursdaypost yesterday. That’s OK, we’ll just pretend it’s Thursday. This is part 2 in a series of how to thrift for books without going to the thrift store.

In my Part 1, I talked about going to addall.com to find the best price on used books. So it does involve money to use this method, but you don’t have to leave the house. If you want to know all about that, go read Part 1 here. You will be entering a whole new universe of used book shopping!

Now suppose you want to go thrifting for books, but you don’t have any money to spend on books, but you do have some gas in your car or some energy in your legs to go walking. I’ve got you covered!

This time my suggested method involves no money, but it does involve travel. Depending on where you live, you might even be able to walk to these locations to get used books. They aren’t free, rather, you exchange a used book of yours for each book you take from The Little Free Library. Here’s a sample one above and below. Every one is unique! Each library is typically at a private residence, so be respectful.

Here’s what you do:

1. Go to the website littlefreelibrary.org
2. Type in the location of where you want to go looking for books in the search space on the world map page of the site. Whatever time slot you have for this outing, and however close or far the little libraries are to each other will determine how many little free libraries you can visit.

3. Make your plan for where you are going. You might want to walk to all of them, you might want to drive and then park at a central location and then walk to all the little libraries, or bike, or you may just want to drive to each one.

3. Go through your home and find some books you want to exchange. However many books you want to get, that’s how many books to bring.

4. Walk or drive to the Little Free Libraries you’ve mapped out.

5. Peruse through the books available and put a book in the library for however many you take out.

That’s it!!! Enjoy your new-to-you books that you didn’t have to shell out any money for.

Here’s a huge hint: have your smart phone handy so you can quickly do a search for any books to see if they are a good fit for your tastes and standards. Check the synopses, ratings, and reviews, on amazon and goodreads.com.

Here are some of the books I’ve found from some of my Little Free Library jaunts lately. Quite the variety, right? Ooops, I didn’t mean to include the Ben Franklin book twice.

In the top photo, the Ben Franklin book is covering up this book below. My copy has no pictures on the cover but an amazon copy looks like this. I’m excited to read it! It’s by the wife of famous music composer Irving Berlin, Ellin Duher Mackay Berlin.

Here’s the synopsis from goodreads.com:

“THE CAMERON GIRLS…
…there were four of them. They grew up in New York’s fabled world of wealth and prestige… in the golden, bittersweet era that marked the end of one century and touched the beginning of another. There was Julia, who married almost too well; Maud, who defied convention and lived to en-joy it; Nell, the youngest, perhaps the most sentimental, certainly the happiest; and Esther, whose love brought her little happiness and a life-long scandal.”

Sounds fascinating right?!

I’m looking forward to going on Little Free Library jaunts this fall with my married daughter, and maybe my mom and/or girlfriends. We could spend all morning going to as many we can fit in between 9-12 noon, and then go to the park, and read for a few hours while snacking and sharing what we learn. If these had been around when my children were little I would have loved doing this as a monthly trip! Happy exploring and reading!