Frugal Reader

The blog community delivers. The Readership at The Lemonade Stand are recommending FrugalReader.com as another book trading location. Here are the particulars:

Who are they? They are Frugal Concepts, LLC, headed by Gene J. McCabe, a self-confessed book hoarder who didn't have the support of this blog or a very strong local library system. What he did have the support of was a "Dream Team" of entrepreneurs who came up with Frugal Reader over a brainstorming retreat to identify new products and services to "advance people's lives." yadda yadda yadda, Frugal Reader, 2004.

Sounds suspicious. Was one of those brainstormers Meg Whitman or something?
Not quite, but one of them was Joe Marinelli. Maybe this Joe Marinelli, maybe a pal from 10th grade.

So what's the deal? Similarly to other trading posts we have listed here, you list your books by ISBN and use credits to trade, most like BookMooch.com.

What's the catch? Why are you so cynical? The basic membership is free and will get you what you want. Premium fees buy you more control over the credit-cost of your books and create "custom trade groups." I read this to mean porn. But after they find out I have linked to them, and see that I said that, they will correct me.

What's the hot book on their list right now? Hard to tell. I browsed "Literature" and came up with a bunch of glurgy junk like 1003 great Things about Friends. ("No, go ahead and add the other 3. Those are really good.")

Any standouts? Discussion groups, which can be entertaining if you can stand the bulletin board format of discussion groups. I've never been able to. My book trade needs are more utilitarian than community. Like most of my life.

Closing thoughts? Category called "Women's Fiction," which is somehow not Romance, Gay & Lesbian, or Literature. It has the subcategories "Divorce," "Domestic Life," (Erma Bombeck?) "Friendship," (1003 of them), "Mothers & Children," "Single Women," (children not assumed) and "Sisters."

I comfort myself that this is alphabetical order, not priority order. So where is Little Women, you might ask? Perhaps all of them.