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A Night of Bookswapping
July 19, 2007
You read it here first: the latest trend is the bookswapping party. How do I know this? My friend K.S. invented it, that's how.
Ms. K. held the first bookswap for some friends and colleagues about 18 months ago, the idea behind it being threefold: to clean off her bookshelves, to grab some new reads, and to have some bookish conversation without having to have read any book in particular.
The rules were, and remain, elegantly simple: bring any books in good condition that you're finished owning. You can take the same number as you bring (although by each bookswapping night's end, this rule is usually broken). We pile the books in a central location, pour wine and beer, and grab plates of nosh (last night there was everything from pretzels to charcuterie to kibbeh).
The best part is the conversation, and this is why I want to champion the bookswap as the new book club (perhaps not replace it... book clubs are fantastic, and at one point I was in three at the same time): the conversation ranged much farther than the snacks. At one point, there was heated discussion about whether or not A Thousand Splendid Suns is better than The Kite Runner. Over in another corner, a friend who had had a truly wretched day at work lit up with joy on finding Ann Hodgman's delightful Beat That! cookbook. One woman focused on finding chick lit, while another's stack included Paul Auster, George Eliot, and an extremely quirky little tome about Jane Austen's sex scenes.
And much, much more. But you get the picture. It was easy, it was fun, and everyone went home with something new. (There are always books left over, and it's up to the evening's host to scoop them all up and keep them, or give them to a library... the latter always wins. After all, we need room for the new ones we've collected.)
It's high time that I hosted a book swap: despite the five boxes I brought to my library last week, despite the 20 books I toted to the bookswap last night... I still have old books that must make way for new. Hmmmmm... maybe an Oktoberfest?
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on July 19, 2007 | Comments (10)
