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Books You've Picked Up for Free (or Bought Very, Very Cheaply)

Started by Prez, October 08, 2017, 03:56:54 PM

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Prez

As I mentioned in the Book Club thread, my local tube station has a pop-up library, which is made up entirely of books that people donate on their way to the platform. I've had tremendous luck with this place, sometimes at very convenient moments. These are the prize pickings for me:

Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, et al.
2888 by Roberto Bolaño
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford
Design Patterns Explained by Alan Shalloway

And a couple of others I can't remember off the top of my head. There must have been a software engineer living in the area for the computer-based ones - I know they came from one guy (he always wrote his name on the inside cover) - and Middlemarch was just one of a trove of old Penguin Classics books someone had dropped off one week. The quality of the donations has petered out since it was started last year (or the year before), but I always take a glance whenever I'm travelling, and I try to give away some of my own.

What treaures have you found? Where do you go to pick up free books or buy extremely cheap ones?

When I lived near Richmond, W & A Houben used to have free-standing, rotating rack for books under £1 outside their shop. I bought the likes of Camus, Betjeman, Marvell, Keats, and a load of other great authors from that. It's a shame they're no longer open. I thought it was the best book shop in the area.

Dex Sawash

My neighbor has a birdhouse looking book exchange on a post near the street. Always full of crap like
Seniors guide to the iPad
or
Visiting Rhodesia on a Budget

Large Noise

Had to read 'Waiting for the Barbarians' by JM Coetzee for uni. I knew it was pretty short so waited until the night before the class before searching for it on Kindle and discovering that it was unavailable.

Resorted to downloading what I think was a Wordpad version on my PC, which I then had send to my Kindle.

Ended up with the whole novel condensed into one long paragraph, which was quite good actually.

Small Man Big Horse

I found Disclosure by Michael Crichton on an empty train once so took it with me, read two pages, and then it ended up on the top of a cupboard for ten years. Recently donated it to a charity shop, which is pretty mean of me I reckon, but that's the kind of guy I am.

Serge

You are talking to the King Of The Blag here - when I was at my previous job, I dealt with reps from each publisher directly, and whenever they showed me a forthcoming book that I liked the look of, I would just ask for a free copy, and 99% of the time, got one. To be fair, this was almost the only way I could afford to get new books at the time, as the wages weren't great, so I could use my money to buy records and then just blag the books.

Some reps were more amenable than others. I'm not going to name any names, obviously, as I don't know how much leeway they were given to do this, but I certainly abused that right to death. Some reps were even happy enough to let me ask for books that we weren't going to sell at the shop.

Many years previous to that, I worked for a remainder book company who would often get pallets of books from big publishers, which they'd paid rock-bottom prices for, and the general idea was that we would then price the books according to what we thought we could get for them (we would knock out the average paperback for £2.99). The books were all returns from full price booksellers, and apparently it wasn't legal for the publishers to attempt to sell them at full price again, which is why we were able to get hold of them, as they would still make a small amount of money on them.

Of course, it was very random what you'd end up getting in each pallet. The worst case scenario would be a pallet full of one title, which didn't happen often, but the one time that sticks in my mind was a doozy - a pallet which was nothing but unsold copies of the 'Mrs. Merton Friendship Book', a comedy cash-in title that obviously hadn't set the shelves alight, and which we couldn't even sell when we marked it down to 25p. I like to think that under the foundations of the Crossrail station at Tottenham Court Road, there might still be a mountain of them propping the whole thing up.

Anyway, other than times like that, the pallets would have a reasonable mix of decent titles, and so, as I would always volunteer to go through them and price them up, whenever I saw something I liked the look of, that book magically got priced at 10p (which, given my staff discount was 50%, worked out quite well.) It was through this method that I got pretty much entire back catalogues of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera, Will Self, Georges Perec, etc, etc, for very little outlay.

At my current job, we do get occasional random proofs sent through, and we always get sent copies of the books of the month, which makes sense, I guess, as it helps to have booksellers who have read them and can then enthusiastically recommend them to customers. And in the event that they don't like them, at least still know enough about the book to be able to recommend it when the chance comes up anyway. And we can occasionally request certain proofs. But on the whole, given the combination of no longer living in London and the fact that we get 50% discount, I tend to buy all of my books again these days.

Prez

Quote from: Dex Sawash on October 08, 2017, 04:26:53 PMAlways full of crap like

Visiting Rhodesia on a Budget

What are you trying to say? That visiting Rhodesia on a budget is a false hope, a mere pipe dream? Have you no grit, sir?

Dare to dream!

sillymisslily

Long Days Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
Deathwatch and The Maids by Jean Genet
Hindi for beginners
German short stories
Book of baby names
A really shit play that had been on Greater Manchester fringe
All courtesy of the free book bin at the Royal Exchange

Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Jane Eyre from the free book thing in Tescos

Got a Simpsons guide to Springfield from a book stall at a festival- forgot to go and pay for it

Accidentally shoplifted one of the Harry Potters from a Sainsburys in 2006. Good times.

Serge

Oh, and I got a copy of 'The Da Vinci Code' for free. Before I read it, I would happily slag it off, secure in the knowledge that it almost certainly was a big steaming pile of crap. A friend (who liked it) would always remark that I couldn't slag off a book I've never read, so I said that if she got me a free copy, I'd read it. One day, she found a copy abandoned on a train, and gave it to me with a look of satisfaction, so I read it. It was a big steaming pile of crap.

DukeDeMondo

My cousin nicked me a copy of The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker from a bookshop in town when I was 11 or 12 years old. I felt so guilty about it I couldn't look at it, never mind read it. Threw it in below my bed and tried to forget all about it, but I couldn't sleep knowing it was under there. More tell-tale than hellbound, really.

In the end I ran crying to my ma and told her all about it, then took it out and threw it in the skip at the end of the avenue and that was the end of that.

Few years ago someone left a pile of books on a wall beside my flat. Top of the pile was High Concept, the Don Simpson biography. I love that book. I made off with it, even though it was all fucked up from the rain. Still have it.

Mr Eggs



25p. Worth a go on account of the amount of time and energy the mad bastards spent on haircut debates.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

I bought a copy of Camus' " The Outsider " for 18p back in 1987, which even then wasn't a lot of money.

A perfectly good contribution to this thread, I feel.

MikeShaft

I once found a whole sales bin full of five book box sets of the Hitchhiker series for 50p. I bought ten and gave them away to people as and when. On eventually reading them I discovered why they were so cheap as they clearly were early proof copies and contained many spelling errors. Still. Bargain.

Buelligan

I ran the village library free for a few years, it was a complete bordel, so I decided to go through, categorise, list and order everything (like an anal twat).  Amongst all the books about different ways to kill wild animals or grow grapes and tales of romance on the garrigue, I discovered a perfect, numbered, copy of



The terrible, terrible, story of the Nazi massacre and destruction that took place at Oradour sur Glane during WWII including graphic photographs.  It was published and distributed to ensure that this act of profound evil and the responsibility we all have to prevent such acts, would never be forgotten.  It had been forgotten in a cupboard, probably since it was printed. I was extremely tempted to steal it but instead, I made it it's own little corner with a few other books of a similar bent. 

Then the big librarian came from the city to view our library and said the book was too valuable and rare to remain here.  And so it eventually left to be safe in a cupboard where hopefully, someone dishonest will find it one day and finally set it free.

Pranet

From those old phone boxes which people stick books in:

The Right Stuff.
Judge Dredd Case files Vol 2.
A copy of the Wiltshire Archaeological journal.

From the "library" at the End of the Road Festival.

A biography of Spike Milligan
A collection of Blandings short stories by PG Wodehouse.
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross.
Vol 2 of a translation of Remembrance of Things past because a Frenchman insisted.
A Fighting Fantasy book.

I sure there are others I have forgotten.

If we extend it to "cheap" then most of the books I own. I am forever snuffling around church fetes, library sales and the like. 


Attila

My prize-winner is my lovely lovely Oxford Classical Dictionary. They go for £100s even second hand; I was trawling Amazon one day and found a 1982 edition (the one I was after) for £40. I figured it was a trainwreck of a copy, but the only thing wrong with it was a couple of pages hadn't been completely trimmed and were sticky-outty. Seller's wife hand-trimmed the pages with her sewing scissors. The copy is otherwise pristine.

Another coup: as a student/post-grad/early career researcher, wanted a Niermeyer Medieval Latin dictionary. I was at the Leeds medieval conference a couple years back and found a second hand, older edition for about £70 -- MINE. Same conference, Brill was there with a shiny new, two-volume edition for an eye-watering €300. Last day of the publishers' book fair, they'd slapped a post-it on the display copy - £50. Now I have an older version that I keep at home, and the shiny shiny new one gets a lot of use at school by me, colleagues, and post-grad students (although it lives in my room with a massive Lewis and Short).

Another coup: This gorgeous book was produced in a very limited number ((His Master's Voice in America

https://www.amazon.com/Masters-America-Communications-Pioneering-Progress/dp/0939766167/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1507579751&sr=1-2&keywords=his+master%27s+voice

It usually sells for extortionate amounts on Amazon (US). Someone had a clean copy on eBay for about $10 a few years back, BIN. Sat on my shelf at the moment with my other Victor, EMI, and early recording  history books.

holyzombiejesus

I used to shoplift so many books. Sometimes from WH Smiths or a supermarket, so I could take back to Waterstones and exchange for vouchers which I could then spend on music in HMV, but usually just for myself. I don't any more (haven't done for over 20 years) but it used to be really pleasant bagging some nice Bukowski editions for nothing.

Sebastian Cobb

I bagged a copy of The Martian in a charity shop for 50p at the weekend.

idunnosomename

I found a book about the Medieval Warhorse on a tressle table in my local Morrisons the other day

It's got proper endnotes and everything.

garbed_attic

I had a year where it felt like I kept seeing free copies of The Third Policeman. I can't remember if I replaced my old copy or - more likely - took a free one, felt obsessive over the fact it was creased, gave it to a friend as a random present, and bought myself a new copy.

The Exeter Book Cycle definitely turned up some gems though. My favourite is my big hardback of Victorian boardgames, which are almost all weird variants on 'Snakes and Ladders', such as one about the Suffragettes called PANKASQUITH!

studpuppet

In a former job as the Children's Book Buyer for a Charing Cross Road bookshop, I subbed in a couple of copies of a book from the rep that used to sell me the Goosebumps series, purely because it had an interesting cover.

Put one on the shelf and took the other home to read it. Liked it, kept it, ordered one or two more for the shop, and thought no more about it until the second one in the series came out, along with the PB that took off like nobody's business. Eventually sold those two plus the third as a set for £3,147 which contributed to my first mortgage.