Life stories and memoirs are popular books right now. Everyone who grows up has to learn the same things - how to behave in the world and relate to others. Each person has a different experience as he or she learns the ways of the world. Some people have a more unique experience than others, and some have such horrific lives that they need to share their stories with others to help prevent further occurrences, or to offer hope to those in similar situations, or to get back at those in their lives who made it so difficult. The following memoirs are about some of the most unimaginable childhoods made that way by the very people who are supposed to love and protect. You’ll be amazed at their stories.

A Child Called It: One Child’s Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer

Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood by Julie Gregory

They Cage the Animals at Night by Jennings Michael Burch

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Because I Remember Terror, Father I Remember You by Sue William Silverman

The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

Crisis Pursued by Disaster Followed Closely by Catastrophe: A Memoir of Life on the Run by Mike O’Connor

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

My Lobotomy by Howard Dully

Wayne: An Abused Child’s Story of Courage, Survival and Hope by Wayne Theodore

Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

Swallow the Ocean by Laura M. Flynn

We usually aren’t big fans of book annihilation, but sometimes there are ways to use books that have fulfilled their original purpose and need to be reimagined to find new life. Here are some clever ideas we found online and some books you can check out to make new use of your old books.

This Into That is an online gallery of an artist’s work, primarily bookshelves made from books. I like to think of it as the big books hugging the little ones.

This tutorial on making a floating book shelf out of a book looks pretty easy, and it does look great on the wall.

You can find out how to make bookends out of books here.

Remember being a kid and wishing for a secret treasure chest? This tutorial is one to read so you can do just that using an old book.The tutorial is great, and make sure to read the comments on the blog entry; they are hilarious!

This is a tutorial on making a bookcase from encyclopedias.We all knew there was something we could do with those sets of encyclopedias that our parents took most of our young lives to pay off! — Other than study them that is.

Imagine a hallway leading to your personal library lined with lamps made from books… Here a website that can tell you how to make one!

Below are a couple of books (available at your library) to get your creative juices flowing:

Altered Books Workshop : 18 Creative Techniques for Self-Expression

Altered Book Collage

Alter This! Radical Ideas for Transforming Books into Art

Ok, I know I wrote on Wednesday that this post would contain ideas for using books in unusual ways, but PBS is showing Emma on Sunday! I wanted to sneak in another Jane Austen post. Seriously, we found so many books related to Jane Austen that we have probably two more posts planned. I hope you can stand it.

In our last Jane Austen post, we recommended some books by other authors that use Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as a launching pad. Now, here are a number of books that either imagine a continuation to Jane Austen’s other novels or tell the further adventures of her other novels’ characters. Perhaps you’ll find one or two of interest….

Mansfield Revisited, by Joan Aiken. Doubleday, 1985.

The Youngest Miss Ward, by Joan Aiken. St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

Eliza’s Daughter, by Joan Aiken. St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

Emma Watson: The Watsons Completed, by Joan Aiken. St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

Jane Fairfax: Jane Austen’s Emma, Through Another’s Eyes, by Joan Aiken. St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

A Visit to Highbury: Another View of Emma, by Joan Austen-Leigh. St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Mr. Knightley’s Diary, by Amanda Grange. Berkley Trade, 2007.

Finally, Sybil Brinton wrote a novel that involves characters from all of Jane Austen’s novels, called Old Friends and New Fancies. The Greene County Public Library does not own a copy of this book right now, but we should be able to request it for you through the Worldcat interlibrary loan system. Worldcat is a catalog of hundreds of libraries around the country (and the world). Through this system, you can search for an item that GCPL does not own, and request that it be sent to GCPL for you to borrow. It takes two to four weeks for these items to come in, and you may generally borrow them for three weeks, with one renewal period. Fines for overdues are higher than the fines for regular items, but Worldcat is a wonderful way to have access to more items than are available in Greene County.

Ok, you now know what to do with cast off books, but obviously, you don’t want to get rid of all of them. Here are a number of options for organizing and storing your collection.

The library has a number of books related to cleaning up clutter, storage ideas and building bookcases. I came across the neatest idea on the Internet the other day: here’s a link to a blog with pictures of a book case that forms a staircase! Sound a little too challenging for you, or maybe you already have a staircase? Check out one of these books.

There are a number of websites that help keep track of the books you’ve got at home. LibraryThing is a particularly wonderful one. You can organize and catalog your books, keep track of the books you have read, and even get suggestions for other books you might like based the books you already own/have read. I personally use LibraryThing as a reading history. Each time I finish another library book (or buy a new personal book), I visit the website to enter the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and fill out when I finished it. I use LibrayThing to discover what I might like to read that I’ve overlooked. Even as a librarian, surrounded by books all day long, I am occasionally at a loss for something to read. LibraryThing uses a formula to make recommendations based on what is in your library using the idea that other people who have the same books as you also frequently have this other book that you may want to try also. Neat neat.

Another organizing website is Shelfari. I haven’t used that one much simply because I discovered LibraryThing first, and I love it, but Shelfari has plenty of other people who do use it. The concept is very similar to LibraryThing. Both are free to use (LibraryThing is free for up to 200 books, Shelfari is supported by advertisements.)

A note: there are other book cataloging websites. Gurulib and GoodReads are just two more. Take a look around the Internet and see what else is available. If one site doesn’t fit your needs, try another.

So now we’ve figured out how to store and organize those books you’ve decided to keep. My next post should have some interesting ideas for using books in unconventional ways.

Do you have too many books at home, and you just don’t know what to do with them? Before I started working in libraries, I used to buy a lot of books. I also moved eight times in ten years. Each move necessitated a major book purge. I never knew what to do with my cast-offs. I gave them away to friends and relatives. I threw a lot of them away. Then I became a little cleverer. I shall now pass my great ideas on to you, in case you are looking at giant piles of books with no idea what to do with them.

First and foremost, you can donate your books to the library. At the Fairborn Community Library, we accept all current, popular fiction and nonfiction paperback and hardcover books. We’ll look through any donations and decide if the library needs the book to fill a spot on the shelf. If we already own a copy, we’ll check to see if the library copy is still in good condition or if the donated one is better, in which case we’ll swap it. If we don’t need to add the donations to our collection, we’ll put the donated books on the perpetual book sale. These books are available for the public to purchase for 50 cents or a dollar. The funds are used by the Friends of the Library for library programs, new books, furniture and other improvements to the library. So even if your donation is not put on the shelf, the book still goes to helping the library, and someone else will appreciate it! Just a caution, however, the library cannot accept any books that are moldy, wet or otherwise in poor condition. We also cannot use things which are out of date, such as encyclopedia sets, textbooks and magazines. Save your back and don’t haul this kind of book to the library.

There are a couple of other places you can donate. Sometimes shelters and churches collect books to give to people in need. The jail will take paperbacks, but they have specific guidelines for content. Sometimes Goodwill will take some. You can usually give most books away to someone (except those pesky National Geographics! Those beautiful magazines are so hard to get rid of!)

If you’ve got some items that you think might be valuable, you can try to sell them on eBay. We have a staff member here who sells some of the books that the library no longer needs (the money goes to the Friends group). You’d be surprised at the prices people will pay for some books.

One other idea for used books: if you’d like a new book, you can swap your old book on one of several book swapping websites. Book Mooch, PaperbackSwap, Bookins, and WhatsOnMyBookShelf are just a few. If you do an Internet search for “book swap” you should find any number of them. Basically these are websites where you can offer your books for swapping and find other books to receive. They all set up the swap slightly differently, but the idea is the same. Send someone your unneeded book, get another in exchange. You could get new books forever for just the price of shipping. Great idea.

If you don’t want to get rid of your books, my next post will have some ideas for organizing them at home.