Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Top Ten Tuesday: Where to get books

Top Ten {Tuesday}

It's book acquisition season (oh, when isn't it?), so for my first Top Ten Tuesday post I thought I'd post my top ten places to get books.

These are listed in about the order I thought of them:

1. Exodus Provisions: the best homeschool bookstore I've ever seen. Not that I've seen many, and certainly not around here. Exodus is in Oregon City, Oregon, and any homeschooler living nearby should be familiar with the store and its great staff. But they do mailorder, too, so I am still a faithful customer. (Cheap shipping!) Though I'd prefer to be able to go in person.

2. Westminster Bookstore: The bookstore for our seminary but not just books for seminarians. Reformed Christian books for kids and adults. And academics, of course. Cheap shipping here, too.

3. Daedalus Books: remainders, cheap.

4. Chinaberry Books: a sentimental selection; they were better for us when my kids were small. We still treasure many of the picture books we bought from them. This is the sort of book catalog I fear will disappear soon, as people use it as a resource guide to buy elsewhere. My philosophy: if I found it here, I should buy it here.

5. Dover Books: I am always amazed when I hear of someone who doesn't know about Dover Books. Why, I was ordering from them when it was just a print catalog and I had to fill out an order form and send a check and wait weeks for my books. Great books. The best coloring books.

6. Paperback Swap: I just joined, so maybe this is a premature listing, but it looks promising for those of us who have books to get rid of. That includes me.

7. Public Library: OK, you don't own the books, but you get to read them. And some books we just don't need to buy. We love our library and use it a lot. We still buy books, but some are just not keepers.

8. AAUW book sales. These are huge book sales with a wide variety of books, cheap. (We don't always have to buy our books cheap, but it's nice to be able to.) There is no site that I can find for "AAUW book sales" but check for your local area. I discovered that I just missed mine.

9. Public library book sales: with a couple of caveats: only large branches, and only if you can get there early. Otherwise, it'll be all Berenstain Bears and Disney.

10. Powell's City of Books: My bookstore in Portland, Oregon. New and used books together. Love it, miss it. But they do mailorder too!

Where do you get books? Tell me that, then go check out Top Ten Tuesday.

3 comments:

Betsy Escandon said...

You are lucky to live near Powells. I think library book sales are probably the best place to get books, followed by used book stores. I also love Dover coloring books. Thanks for the reminder.

Leslie said...

I am a huge Paperback Swapper. It is an addiction and the denom I belong to has a bookstore I like: http://www.cepbookstore.com/. You have introduced me to some new sites. Thank you!

Marbel said...

Betsy, we don't live near Powells' anymore, but we did enjoy it for many years.

WW - I had forgotten about CEP bookstore! We were formerly PCA (OPC now because of moving; they are so similar) and have a lot of books from that store! We visited one time when we were in the area and even though it's not really a browsing bookstore had a great time and had to have our things shipped home for us.

Thanks for reminding me!