“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

Don't like reading? Read on...An interesting post. Just because you don’t enjoy reading a good book, doesn’t mean there aren’t many other uses for all of those books piled up in the attic.  Here are photos of a desk at Delft University made of used books.  Typesmith.com shows artistic and occasionally bizarre re-purposed books.

First, consider donating them to the Friends of the Monrovia Public Library. Recycling at its best! The Friends take your books and sell them inexpensively. You can get a charity tax deduction for the donation; do ask for a receipt. The money raised goes right back to the Library for programs and services.  Everything stays right here in town. However, if you're looking for a more unusual reuse, check out "80 Awesome Ideas for All Your Old or Unwanted Books"

Libraries always look for new ways to engage readers through cultural enrichment. But one branch in Scotland took an unconventional approach by hosting a pole dancing class—at the library.  STV reports that pole dancing teacher Nikki Clark hosted the class at the Mayfield Library in Dalkeith, Midlothian, as part of “Love Your Library Day.”

The library also offered “booky table tennis” games to visitors, in which used books were used as paddles and nets in the game.

Juniper Books shows us surprising art from books!

"A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion."   Umberto Eco

Read about the brand new no book library in San Antonio, Texas. Called a "BiblioTech, it's booksless - well physical book but it's "full" of e-books and computers with Internet connections. Ah, some of us still love the feel and smell of a real book - paper, print, glue and all! Who really wants to go to sleep with a computer?

Imagine a book vending machine that dispenses surprise books! This link will take you to the NPR story. Though owner Stephen Fowler (who also owns the book store that houses the pistachio green "machine"), says he's not making much money off the Biblio-Mat, he adds "it's a great way to entertain customers — especially kids."

Hope you all read novelist Richard Russo's piece in the November 18, 2012 Parade Magazine. If not, click the link and do it! He's nostalgic about his childhood stationery/book store,  Alvord and Smith; laments their demise in the modern-day point and click world; however, for him and others, they remain "places of wonder."

If you've not read Helen Hanff's book 84  Charing Cross Road (1970), a true story about a New York writer and a London bookseller and books and friendship you'll still appreciate her comment "I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest."

Hanff and bookseller Frank Doel corresponded as Hanff searched for hundreds of obscure books. Hanff postponed visiting her English friends until too late; Doel died in December 1968  and the bookshop eventually closed. Hanff did finally visit Charing Cross Road and the empty but still standing shop in the summer of 1971, a trip recorded in her 1973 book The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.

Don't you just love it when you find that  you and an earlier reader are so wonderfully linked. In fact, it was my good friend Marge who introduced me to the book about30 years ago. She and I were were joined by friendship and a love of books and language.