The Bangor area group meet to exchange their old reads in return for new ones. Clearing up room on bookshelves and making connections with fellow book worms.
BREWER, Maine — Books that were read once but haven’t been touched since their last pages were turned are find new life at the Bangor/Brewer book swap.
Every three months, readers bring a stack of their loved but now finished books to trade them out for a stack of new reads.
What once began as a small exchange between Sarah Clark and her friends has grown to entice more than two dozen bookworms on Sunday.
Clark started the swap because she wanted to continue reading new books, but her previous reads were crowding her bookshelves.
“I’m not going to read a book twice, and I don’t really want to keep the books on my shelf that I’m not going to use. I want to be able to trade them,” she said.
So, for the past year Clark and other readers in the community gather at restaurants and coffee shops on the weekend to talk and swap.
Meeting fellow page-turners is Lisa Sturgeon’s favorite part.
“It’s a great way to connect and network,” Sturgeon said. “Sometimes we get stuck in our own routines, and so getting to meet new people that have a shared passion is really great.”
Attendees only need to bring at least one book to swap, and not every book finds an immediate home.
However, Clark said she offers the staff at the group’s meeting place of choice to sift through the books first before dividing the rest between the tiny libraries around town.
The swaps offer one way to expand one’s literary horizons, but local libraries also offer similar options.
Each year the Bangor Public Library creates a bingo board, challenging patrons to read books throughout the year that meet certain criteria.
“The book bingo card is a chance for people to kind of broaden their horizons and look for stuff that they would never have picked up to read but end up really enjoying,” Ben Treat, the library’s director, said.
In order to check a box, readers may have to finish a ghost story or a novel inspired by Shakespeare or read an Edgar Award winner cover to cover, something they might not typically be inclined to read.
If a reader completes a line or fills out the bingo card completely within a year, they get entered into a gift card drawing.
More information on the bingo reading challenge can be found online and when the book swap will meet next can be found on the group’s Facebook page.
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