A Book Adventure!

This weekend, one of my best friends and I decided to go on a little adventure and visit all the “street libraries” in our area. I saw this idea on Instagram and thought it would be such a fun way to explore our town while exchanging some of our old books for “new” ones. When I graduated college, I found myself with an overwhelming amount of books from the literature classes I took for my English degree. Some of these books I loved and decided to keep, but there were several that I have been meaning to get rid of for a while! So I took a tote bag of these books with me to exchange at the street libraries.

First, we met at my house and carpooled to one of our favorite local coffee shops for coffee and breakfast. While we were there, we went to the little free library website to see how many libraries were in our area. Where we live, everything is spread out, so this adventure took us several hours to complete! We found five street libraries in our area, so we mapped out the most efficient way to stop by each one.

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At our first stop, we hit the jackpot! I ended up finding seven books, and my friend found two. Some of these were brand new hardcover copies of trending books, such as Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries. We were shocked to find so many at our first stop, so we were eager to keep traveling to the other four stops to see what they had.

At this first stop, I found a copy of Stephen Kings’s Billy Summers in hardcover. It looks brand new! I have never read a Stephen King novel (mostly because I’ve been to scared to try), but I’ve heard that this one isn’t as scary as some of his others! Billy Summers was published in 2021, so it is a fairly new release. I have seen reviews of it everywhere! I planned on buying a copy for myself, but I lucked out at this first stop!

My other finds were equally exciting. In 6th Grade, I read The Hunger Games trilogy and fell in love with it. I am convinced that it is the series that started my reading obsession. After I finished those books, it took me so long to find any other book that compared. I was obsessed all the way through my middle school and early high school years as the movies were being released. I think I’ve read the series at least three times now! However, I have moved houses so much since I left for college, so I lost my copies of the three books along the way. When The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes came out, I wanted to reread the trilogy and then read that one. So you can imagine how excited I was to find hardcover, brand new copies of all three books at this first stop! I have added it to my summer TBR–I can’t wait to dive into the trilogy again and read the prequel just in time for the new movie that is set to come out this fall! I may annotate it this time around since it has been several years since I read it last.

I also found all three copies of the Divergent trilogy! I have never read those, so I’m excited to get to read those eventually!

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At our second stop, we found a couple books that we loved! I found a beautiful copy of The Odyssey, and my friend found a book from a series she’s been wanting to read! This second stop was located in the cutest place by the lake–it took us down winding lake roads surrounded by trees on all sides. It was so beautiful! We were shocked by how much of the area we’ve never seen before, considering that we live here! It really did feel like an adventure.

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We didn’t have very much luck at our last three stops, but we still enjoyed the scenery along the way! Our last stop was at an elementary school, so we ended up leaving a few children’s books that we had wanted to get rid of; however, we didn’t find anything we wanted to take from that library! It was mostly children’s books, so I hope some of those kids get to enjoy a new assortment of fun books!

My friend and I will definitely be doing this again–we have decided to make a day of it once in the spring and once in the fall, since those seasons are so beautiful. Like I said, the scenery of this trip was full of nature, dense woods, the lake and beautiful trails!

I encourage you to check out the little free libraries that are near you! Head over to their website to find the ones that are near you, grab your book besties, and make a fun day out of it! You never know what you might find, and it’s a great way to give away some books you don’t need anymore!