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No longer on the shelf - new homes for your old books
Cordelia O'Neill
UNWANTED Christmas books can now find a new life thanks to a website created by two avid bookworms.
West Hampstead computer programmer Neil Ferguson set up www.readitswapit.co.uk with Kentish Town resident Andrew Bathgate so people could switch their old and unwanted books for new ones.
"We wanted to create a site that would enable people to gain access to hundreds of books without spending any money," said Mr Ferguson.
"I used to commute a lot on the tube so I would read to try to escape from the reality that I was squashed next to somebody's armpit," said Mr Bathgate.
"I was spending a lot on books and running out of space to store them so I came up with the idea for ReadItSwapIt."
Since its launch in 2005, more than 100,000 books have been swapped through the website.
"Lots of our members tell us they are addicted," said Mr Ferguson's girlfriend and fellow swapper, Donna Werbner.
"One member has swapped more than 800 books since she joined a year ago - that's the record so far."
While Dan Brown's bestseller The Da Vinci Code rides high on the book-swapping charts, the most popular title remains Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, a novel narrated by the spirit of a teenager who was raped and murdered by her neighbour.
Titles as diverse as Step By Step About Dwarf Hamsters, How Proust Can Change Your Life and Accommodating Broccoli In The Cemetery have all been traded on ReadItSwapIt's website.
"We get some insane stuff," Ms Werbner said. "My personal all-time favourite was How To Test Your Cat's IQ: Definitive IQ Test For Cats by Melissa Miller. It's a great way to experiment with reading as it's easy to take risks on books you're not sure about."
The website's founders are expecting to see 10,000 books swapped in the first week of the New Year as people start to exchange their unwanted Christmas gifts.
"It's like Christmas every time you get a book in the post," Mr Ferguson said. "It's exciting. There's something very special about books."
editorial@hamhigh.co.uk
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