SilverThistle

With BL being so unsettled at the moment I've been mooching around to see what I can scare up in the way of book community replacement should the worst happen here (fingers crossed it won't come to that). There's not a lot out there.

However, the one good thing to come out of all this is that I found Bookstagram and I'm hooked already.  Even if BL is around forever and just keeps getting better and better I think I'll keep with bookstagram too.  It's quite addictive, in a Pinterest kind of way, and there's a sort of community there too...

Anyhoo, I was browsing their #tags from my laptop and my friend (who is a non-reader) was doing her own searches on her tablet and we were oohing and ahhing over the pretty photos when I came across a photo of someones book club package.  Now, I've seen mention of book club subscriptions before because some of my friends here subscribe to some of them I think.  I liked the look of this one that Lagniappe mentioned a while back but it's not open to us here in the UK :(

Oh well.

So, I found some UK ones on bookstagram and the web and my friend and I were checking them out.  The ones we found were for mostly used books and it was random surprises for everyone but the costs seemed way out of proportion to what was being offered. One wanted about £160 for a year!  £160 for 12 secondhand books! My friend was like, "No way!  Even I could do you a club subscription for a quarter of that!  In fact, give me a tenner for what's left of the year and I'll set up my very own BFF Book Club, just for you.  A years worth of amazing reads for a tenner?  You know you want to!". 

I did want to!  So I've signed up, lol!  A tenner gets me a surprise book every month and I've had the first one already even though I only joined yesterday!  She was quick off the mark and snapped up my May BotM (Book of the Month) yesterday afternoon and handed it in last night.  She hasn't been in the library for years she said but went in to get tips about what to choose and saw their booksale shelf crammed with bargains. People hand in their old books and the library just sell them on without introducing them to stock so bargains can be found. She picked up this brand new, unread copy for just 30p!  There was a little bag of sweets in with my package too (eaten already) and a velum bookmark.

June is only a few days away so I'm looking forward to seeing what my BFF club book will be for that month.  My friend says she'll have fun too, hunting down "cheapo" books as the heady world of books is all new to her.  Might even get her tempted to pick up one for herself while she's at it.

Such fun!