Re-stocking a teens bookshelf cheaply

Spendless

My 14yo son has a weakness in English, which has started to affect other subjects. One of the issues is he doesn't give enough detail when writing things down. This has started causing issues when he needs to revise from his notes.

He has started having weekly private tuition. His tutor has recommended that he reads more fiction, which she says will help him.

When he told me, I realised that his bookshelf though full of books, are mostly well-read favourites. I was thinking of removing the majority of the books from his shelf (I'm not going to throw them) and replacing them with new reading material. Son is happy with this suggestion.

I realise the mse thing would be to go to the library, but I want him to have plenty of books on hand that don't have to go back in a few weeks time, but I don't wish to spend lots of money on brand new books.

So far, I've come up with going to charity shops and also my nearest big supermarket does a scheme where people can donate books and if you want to take one you just give money to their charity box, so we can go and look there for anything he might like.

After other ideas to add where we can find cheap books?

Boomdocker

What about other friends or family that may have read/outgrown books or are happy to pass on or swap books?

whodathunkit

I really recommend these people for secondhand books and free delivery.

http://www.awesomebooks.com/

What about moving some of your and your husband's books from other bookshelves and putting them in your son's room?

jog

Car boot sales and the market, our local indoor market has a big second hand book seller.

Does his school do a book exchange scheme? Some of our local schools have a book exchange that is run through the school library.

bluenoseam

Time for the typical techie scumbag to come in - why not try to pick up an e-reader, you can pick up thousands of free books for them almost at will! But if you're dedicated to the printed word try places like Gumtree as well.

ruralruth

I use ReaditSwapIt a lot - it's really good. Loads of great titles.

marisco_2

How about your son just uses his school library. Surely they would be flexible on how long a book could be out for, if they reasoned that some flexibility would encourage a young man to read and expand his vocabulary, improve his comprehension and strengthen his imagination. As a teacher I would whole heartedly encourage this if a parent of a child in my class asked if they could do this.

elona

Have a look at the book people website. In the past i got a set of ten teenage books for a tenner and either three or four in a collection for a fiver. Sometimes postage is free as well.

They are great for adult books and non fiction as well.

Spendless

Thanks great ideas.

We do have both an all year round weekly car boot sale and an indoor market with second hand book exchange stall- which I've never been to:o, but we can certainly go and investigate. I could do with a sort out of my books, so we can re-purpose them into exchanging or giving to son. Also his aunt recently passed on some books, a quick glance in the bag made me think they were duplicates of ones he already had, but can have a thorough look through. No idea about any schemes run by his school library, but worth asking.

I also realised after posting, I have a very underused kindle. Son has a nexus google. I have no idea but can he download books on that?

mummyroysof3

Yes he can using the kindle app or other ones. I only use kindle one and the one my local library uses to allow free borrowing of ebooks on

Spendless

marisco wrote: »

How about your son just uses his school library. Surely they would be flexible on how long a book could be out for, if they reasoned that some flexibility would encourage a young man to read and expand his vocabulary, improve his comprehension and strengthen his imagination. As a teacher I would whole heartedly encourage this if a parent of a child in my class asked if they could do this.

Certainly we can do this in addition to, but I don't wish to solely do it because I don't want a

'I forgot'

'I didn't have time'

or

'I dunno'

when asking if he's changed his reading book for something new to read.