Free & dirt cheap reading

I am a student and I live in a single room. My rent represents between 80 and 85% of my salary, and I have to pay for my tuition, my bills, my clothes, my yoga, my entertainment, and most of my food. How do I do it? I wonder the same thing every day. Apparently the government doesn’t, because they’ve resolved to raise tuition next year… FYI, tuition currently represents 30% of my yearly salary. (Yes, I know, 80 + 30 = 110; how do I do it?) The Liberals suck at basic math, don’t they?

All this to say that, no, I don’t readily spend money on anything, not even books. As a matter of fact, for many years I haven’t bought any new book on principle, because I considered it a superfluous expense. Moreover, books are so expensive! 10 bucks for a paperback, over 20 for hardcover?* That’s quite a lot, but how much of a lot? Skip the next paragraph if you actually feed on lentils and rice (well, that’s what Indians do after all, and Indian cuisine is niiice), and never go out for a drink, and own two outfits per season in total, and always walk instead of taking the bus or train, etc.

But if you don’t, how much exactly is fifty dollars a month? (That means five novels a month, not a bad average if you have a job, a family, friends and hobbies to keep you occupied during what time’s left.) It’s a one-month home connection to Internet. It’s a meal for two at a regular restaurant. It’s going four times to the movies. It’s a monthly transport pass. It’s a week’s worth of sandwiches. Yes, it’s any one of those things. Things nobody really needs that much (except the transport pass, if it’s winter in Montreal and you don’t have a car), yet things most people do spend on, even when they’re not “rich”. I wonder why people keep claiming that books are expensive, when in reality they’re far less expensive than computers, Internet, phone plans, clothes, and most equipment required for any other hobby.

I believe the only reason why we think new books are too expensive for us to buy is that it’s so easy to read for free. And I mean actual, published books, the very same that bookstores try and fob off onto you for the price of a restaurant’s lunch menu. The first provider of free books being, without surprise: libraries! There are libraries in every small town, filled with unsuspected literature jewels. Even the small district library near my workplace in Poland had translations of the most famous American modern romance authors: that is how I got introduced to the genre, and I had far from exhausted their modest collection when I left six months later.

The second obvious place to look for free books is your family and friends. Since I was a kid, I’ve always been borrowing books from my pals. Now that I live far from my parents, they like to leave a fresh load of unread books at my place every time they come visit (it’s almost annoying). Now here’s an anecdote: when I arrived in Poland in 2008, I slept in the bedroom of one of our flatmates, who was away in Sofia at the time. I hadn’t brought any book in my luggage, so obviously I picked one from his library: Król trędowaty (The Leper King). I positively loved it. When the guy came back, we talked about it. He eventually became my favourite flatmate (I didn’t talk much with the other guys). And now, of course, I have all my boyfriend’s books to read if my heart so desires.

That’s already a lot of free books. No wonder they’re piling on my shelves and going unread. (I received two more books in the mail since my last blog about my TBR pile: the wonders of BookMooch.) But let’s say I’m really picky and difficult, and for some reason, I get tired of spending absolutely no money on books… I can still find ways to spend much less than the official bookstores are asking me to. I personally… am a little scared of brand new books. Because I hold books in such reverence, I dread the moment I will commit the first crease, the first dog-ear. (Although I’ve developped quite a technique to read paperbacks without creasing the cover on the edge.) Or I tend to scrutinize new books, and to go crazy whenever I see one tiny nick anywhere. I want to shout: “I’m not paying 10 bucks for that! Refund!”

So, all in all, it’s just a much safer, much more serene solution for me to buy used, secondhand books. And if you want my advice, don’t spend over two and a half dollar on a used book. No matter how well-preserved and uncreased it looks (lucky you!), it’s just not worth it. So that makes a max monthly total of $10.50 if you buy five books per month (you can still borrow the rest if you read more than that): not too bad, eh? And then there’s BookMooch. It’s a website that allows you to exchange books with other readers through the mail; because it’s not a one-on-one exchange, but one which extends to the whole network, there’s a pretty decent choice of titles (at least if you read mass-produced recent American fiction like I do).

The books are completely free on BookMooch. Unfortunately postal mailing isn’t. If you’ve ever sent books over the mail, you already know that shipping a used, 380-page paperback costs about as much as the same book, new. A little less maybe, if you send it in the same country. As a website, BookMooch works according to a discriminating points system: you get points for sending, you lose points for mooching, and you earn/spend more points if you do it internationally than nationally. Not a bad idea, except it’s only one point for sending/mooching within your borders, and three to send/mooch abroad. As if it was three times more expensive to send a book abroad than to, say, Victoria, BC… Not to mention that it’s not the same price for Canadians to ship to the US or to Europe, or for Germans to ship to Canada or to France. Obviously.

As a result, it creates absurd situations, like the fact that I can mooch three different books from fellow Canadians after I’ve only sent one to any other country than mine. Well, it’s up to you to do your math and decide where lies your interest. If shipping a book internationally costs you ten bucks, and you can get three books back with that, then it’s a little over three bucks a book you got. Or maybe you’re also on BookMooch to find specific books that you couldn’t find either in libraries or in used bookstores. (But then you have to be patient.)

Are you also a penniless reader? How do you get your books? Do you truly think books are a luxury item in our societies?

* I live in Canada. I’m speaking in Canadian dollars, not US. By the way, I love following the exchange rate fluctuations from the back covers of books: “Whaaat? $7.50 US here is $8.99 CAN (2002), yet it’s still $8.99 CAN for this time only $6.99 US (1999)? And here $10.99 CAN for the same $6.99 US (2004)?? you gotta be kidding me!!”