What do you do with all those books ....

I'm the first to admit I get a lot of books ... A hell of a lot of books for review and I love that I get them. I do try to read the majority of them and I'd say that 95% of the time I succeed in this.

So what do I do with them all?

I'm now at the point where I can't keep every single book I've read. We have a library at home where I have 3 bookcases to myself (along with a shared adult case and a shared children's case). I'm now at the point where those shelves are almost full. I've now started to be harsh and say to myself that if a book didn't get a more than fours stars I don't keep it (unless it is part of a series). This isn't to say that I still don't have a huge amount of books at home.

I now have a few things I do with all the books that I don't want to keep or that I get doubles of (I am naughty for buying hardbacks / finished copies of books I liked even if I don't need them).

• Give them to my blogging friends. I love doing this especially when it is a surprise. I always joke about how when I visit London for a blog event I am often tortoise like with my backpack weighed down with books for everyone.
• Give them to my friends. I have friends who read but would never willing buy YA titles. I am working on them one at a time to change their minds.
• Give them to the kids at school. I know individual kids who read and read and read. I often take in piles of books for them. 
• Have them in my classroom. Anything historical is brilliant for my classroom. I'm trying to specialise a bit and have titles which are linked into my curriculum but it's proving hard to do!
• Give them to the school library. I am now taking piles of books in. A little bit inside me loves doing this because the lady who runs the library doesn't know her YA as well as I do and she loves getting books she knows the kids will read. Obviously this only works with finished copies.
• Form time reading. This is my newest idea. On a Monday I take a form group. They have to be engaged in something quiet so I can go round and do aall the jobs I need to do. I therefore decided to take in a selection of titles I'd had for review and liked so I could recommend them to particular kids. I'm actually quite impressed as I've managed to get a few kids hooked (one year 8 girl with Skin Deep by Laura Jarratt and one year 11 boy with Naked by Kevin Brooks). I keep mixing it up and bringing different ones in. It's interesting to see which kids go for which books and working out which ones they like because as much as I like reading YA they are the intended audience and I like seeing how they go down. I'd also say their choices so far actually blow theories about award winning books out of the window in some cases.