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Books in English
I am an avid reader.
When I first moved here I regularly exchanged books with other readers by putting an ad on this site and, within a couple of weeks, a swap was arranged. However, in recent years I have had little or no response, despite running a more-or-less permanent ad - it's still there.
Last weekend €6,000 was spent on books at the ActionAid sale so there must still be loads of readers out there. What do you do with your books when you have read them? Is it simply a case that no-one reads the xpats small ads any longer? Is there anywhere else where an ad can be run – or found?
I am aware of Pele Mele and the Brussels book swappers club but Brussels is a 100 km round trip for me. I’ve no problem with making the trip if I KNOW that I can swap a reasonable number of books but I cannot afford to do so on the off-chance that I’ll only find a couple.
Any helpful suggestions are welcomed.
Get yourself to Muntpunt - EUR 10 for the year, borrow books, CDs, DVDs etc etc, Lots of English books available (as well as French, German, Russia, Polish and of course Dutch).
I'm not sure I can help you but I'm going to try out the Brussels book swap this afternoon. Do you want me to report back? If so what is it that you would like me to look out for?
By the way, I check out the ads all the time and to be honest, I don't think I've noticed your ad. I'm going to go into the ads section now and see if I find it.
Muntpunt is the newly refurbished Flemish cultural / social / library building at de Brouckere in Brussels.
And don't worry, they will speak to you in English or French - they are not language totalitarians as in some places/institutions :-)
They will issue you with a BruNO card (Brussels Network Openbare Bibliotheken) which means you can borrow books from any Flemish Community library in Brussels (every commune has one apart from Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe): www.bruno.be
Hi kasseistamper,
So I went and wish I could have stayed longer to meet the adults. I went early with my kids so I only ran into a handful of people. From what I was told most people arrive after 7:30, swap books and sit down for a drink/dinner and a chat with others in the restaurant below. The place is located on the 1st floor of a cosy restaurant.
As for books, it all depends on what you are looking for. There is a little bit of everything. Romance, detective, self help, kids books, foreign language, cooking, chick lit...Its a mishmash of anything and everything. The way it works is you bring the books you don't want/need anymore in decent condition and you pick out whatever you want. No money changes hands but I asked her how many books we could bring at one time and she said that she would find about 20 books max per person a reasonable amount. The event takes place once a month on a Wednesday. Next month I plan to go back around 7:30, with another 10 books or so and enjoy a drink afterwards. Hope I helped you out. You can find the group on Facebook.
Regards, NFR
If I remember correctly the next one is the 23rd of Oct. Starting at 4:30 ish and going until 8:30ish.
I'm afraid I probably don't have the types of books you would like. :s I like chick lit, romance with a twist of comedy and mystery. But give me some time to put a list together, I probably have about 100 books or so and we'll exchange lists.:)
Maybe I'll see you at the next bookswap, here is the link to the group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Brussels-Bookswappers-Club/1160365584...
all the best!
Following a recent trip to UK where I found a charity store that was selling books at 25p each -- I will soon have a decent amount of books to "swap" once I have read them all. :-) swapping is a great idea - I have done one swap with Kassiestamper -- but I suspect he wouldn't want the same books back ;-) However I will have a new batch soon and hopefully some will be ones you haven't already read.
Im over 100kms from Brussels -- so whilst I am happy to travel -- it has to be for a largish quantity of books - both mine to swap out and others to swap in.
