By Mollie Boardman, Chloe Brown, Faith Manalili, Megan Levick, Laila Hulatt
For this issue, the bookshop team delved into some ways of exchanging books! Book swapping helps you share your love for a book with another person and do your part for the environment. We discuss a monthly bookshop exchange event, community spaces like telephone boxes and little free libraries, and even a book swap vending machine! We’ve also included the website BookCrossing, where you can release your own reads ‘into the wild’ for others to find.
Read. Swap. Repeat.
Corn Exchange, Exchange Square, Manchester, M4 3TR
Typically synonymous with sweets, snacks and drinks, vending machines are not the first thing you imagine when you think of book exchanges. For the Corn Exchange, however, they are the perfect piece of equipment to house their free book swap. A great way to relax while shopping or enliven your bookshelf with new discoveries, all this vending machine asks of you is to donate a pre-loved book with one of the hosts near the Fennel Street exit in exchange for a token. All books are second-hand, as is customary for book swaps, so that pre-loved books are kept in circulation, and less carbon emissions are generated by keeping them from going to waste. The Corn Exchange hopes to help the environment through this initiative and encourage a more sustainable alternative to buying new books. If you ever find yourself in Manchester with a second-hand book, why not find the book swap vending machine at the Corn Exchange and try your hand at a book you would never think to read?
Jesmond Vale Little Free Library
Jesmond, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Since 2018, this book exchange has been an active part of the Little Free Library initiative, inspiring the love of reading on a free and trusting basis. In June 2024, the community highlighted its sixth birthday with balloons, welcoming many more years of book swapping in this Northern community. The Tots and Teens Little Free Library has recently been added for younger readers!
The great thing about little free libraries is the variety of titles on the shelves. Previous titles in Jesmond's box include Maggie Shipstead's The Great Circle and Jennifer Niven's All the Bright Places, as well as the occasional blind date with a book. For more information and updates, you can view their Facebook page here.
BookSwop
The Curious Cat Bookshop, 50 Main St, Frodsham, WA6 7AU
The newly opened Curious Cat Bookshop hosts several events that foster conversations about books in the local community, including its monthly BookSwop evenings. From 7:00–9:00 p.m. on the last Tuesday of each month, readers gather in this cosy shop to converse about books they’ve brought and swap them for other books that intrigue them. Additionally, the shop owners offer refreshments.
This event not only gives new life to your old books and allows you to discover new exciting stories while getting to know fellow readers but also provides a cost-effective and sustainable way of reading. Be sure to check out this event if you are in Cheshire! For more information about upcoming BookSwop evenings, see their events page here.
Telephone Box Community Book Exchanges
Sandy Lane, Lymm, WA13 3HY
Church Road, Lymm, WA13 0QG
These community book exchange locations, situated in the heart of Cheshire, are quite unique. They are located within classic red phone boxes that have been beautifully restored into little libraries. The repurposed phone boxes rely on the kindness of volunteers and dedicated community members for their upkeep and book donations.
This initiative supports sustainable reading by giving pre-loved books a new home and is also a budget-friendly way to expand your personal library. The book exchange also helps to build a community of readers by celebrating literature and creating camaraderie amongst local book lovers, bringing people together through a collective love for reading.
BookCrossing
Bookcrossing.com seeks to set book lovers on a scavenger hunt to find books left in locations worldwide. The San Francisco Chronicle has named it “a modern-day message in a bottle,” which perfectly sums up the website.
In brief, members sign up for free, add a BookCrossing label to their pre-loved books and set them free for readers to find in cafés, at bus stops, on public transport, on park benches, and the list goes on…
The site's ‘go hunting’ section provides a list of countries and the number of reads left in the last thirty days. The countries with the most books ‘in the wild’ at the time of writing are Germany with 4,217, the USA with 2,996, Italy with 1,424 and the UK with 1,120. Members will be notified by email when their book is found, and they can read their journal entries to find out strangers’ opinions of the book. Readers can also search for specific titles, hoping that someone has left them somewhere nearby.