By Monica Chard
One of the positives that came out of the lat-est lockdown has been the creation of the Shepperton Book Swap.
With charity shops closed and a dwindling choice of reading material at home, many of us were becoming frustrated. Come to the rescue Evelyn Loy, who set up a Facebook group called Shepperton Book Swap, as one of her Co Op community initiatives. As a student of English, she had a number of books to offer to the community. The concept of take a book and swap it soon changed to one of “please help yourself to a book”. Evelyn posts photos of books available by category: fiction, romance, historical, crime, non fic-tion. Group members then request a book they like the look of and arrange collection (socially distanced) from Evelyn’s home.
Soon though, Evelyn’s book shelves were groaning under donated books, so she asked members to post their own books for swap-ping on the group. And so part two of the Shepperton Book Swap started.
Members post and recommend books. I have taken up recommendations and collected books from several. It has resulted in me reading books I would not have done and very much enjoying them too. I have started getting to know which members might have a similar reading taste to me and have gone back to the same doner a few times.
Of course everything is done at a distance. I have put books up on the group for donation and they are collected from my home, from a box I leave by the front door. So contact is not necessary, but it might still be rather nice to have!
So, we go on to part 3 in the development of the Shepperton Book Swap.
Evelyn’s shelves continue to groan under donated books and the number of members of the group has increased to over 200 in only a couple of months. This has exceeded expecta-tions and shows that our community has a thirst for good literature. So the suggestion was put forward to create a community hub with a book swap shelf, where books can be both left and collected. At the same time, with lockdown easing, we have the chance to physically get together and talk about our beloved reads. So JAMZ, the family run cafe on the high street, has offered to run a trial book swap unit, at the same time as being the meeting place for book lovers in the village.
Even with charity shops open once more, and books galore available to choose from, the group believes that a dedicated swap group will allow that element of recommendation and discussion that many of us have so much enjoyed on the Facebook group.
If you have not yet joined the group, then find it on Facebook, or look out for the new swap facility at JAMZ and an enthusiastic get to-gether of book worms in the café!