SA Bookswap

The South African Bookswap, organised by Tams, or Bibliobookwolf on Instagram, is one of the coolest bookswaps ever, and I wanted in.

Of course, South African as I may be, I don’t live in the country. Or even on the African continent. With shipping costs as high as they are, pairing me with a bookswapper still living in South Africa would be cruel and expensive.

But Tams is a sweetheart and a miracle worker, and managed to find me a Canada-based partner for this bookswap. Get this. A partner who lives in Calgary, like 20 minutes drive away. How cool is that?

Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term bookswap, a bookswap is when you buy and swap books and goodies. You make up the box and give it to your partner, and for SA bookswap, you unbox on the same day, then post the photos/video to Instagram with the hashtag #sabookswap.

The theme for this time’s swap was Second Time Around, and we had to gift secondhand books. We had a budget of $20 and had to unbox on the 6th of September.

With that information, I was unleashed upon the secondhand book world of Calgary. I discovered a few really cool stores because of this challenge, and had so much fun putting together the box for my partner, Stella.

Since she likes historical fantasy, I got her a copy of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. I still haven’t read this book, even though it’s been recommended to me a hundred million times. I really should get on that. 🙂

I also got The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart–the book that got me into fantasy in the first place.

Keeping to the secondhand theme, I painted an old shoebox to contain the goodies, and cut up paper as packaging. I included one of the bookmarks I’ve painted in the last year or so, and got out my trusty alphabet stamps to make some cards.

This is what my book box looked like (but I forgot to take a photo of the lid, sorry).

Could you just die for those socks! I got them from MiniSo, and loved them so much that I’ve since gone back three times and got myself a different pair each time. I adore them!

Anyway. Stella was a wonderful partner, who went out of her way to make my box special. She included two books, Eragon by Christopher Paolini, and Jonathan Strange by Susanna Clarke. Check it out.