New or second hand?

Do you have a preference?

I don't mind, although the smell of new books is fabulous!

What made me think about it is a blog I saw this morning talking about book swopping sites. My reading group call it book adoption lol. Have any of you ever been members of swop sites? I used RISI and BookHopper a lot but as my tbr pile grew and grew I thought I'd better stop!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/01/ethicalliving.recycling

Second hand books that have been lovingly cared for have more character than new books.

Ex library books on the other hand seem to have no character - why the difference I'm not sure...

I know what you mean about library books. I do like to look at the dates though and see which libraries they've been through.

I always used to favour brand new books, but recently, not having much money, hehe, I've developed an appreciation for secondhand.

I'm in the process of clearing out some of my old books that have been neglected and I'm using Book Mooch to send them on to other people around the world, who will read them and possibly even send them on to others when they're done.

Nothing beats the smell of a brand new book but I'm hoping to save the brand new ones for books that I REALLY want and intend to keep.

I have a preference for new ones, partly because second-hand ones may have belonged to smokers and still have a cigarettey smell to them, and partly because I'm the sort of saddo who holds the book so as not to crack the spine, meaning ones that have already got great white wrinkles up the spine and won't lie flat because the spine is curled back on itself just give me the heebie-jeebies.

I hadn't thought about it, but I think I prefer secondhand books. I like to see that they have been read and appreciated, perhaps with comments in the margins and the corners turned over to mark the place. Actually, I prefer most things to have a bit of a 'lived in' look (which is not actually much of a problem in my house).

Second-hand. Definitely.

As for smells, the smell of an old book can't be beat. New book smell is nice, but it's just not the same.

The reason that I get most of my books second-hand is that I'm mostly buying books to complete series, and most of those books are out of print and only available from second-hand bookshops, or on the net. Strangely, I don't buy stuff over the net, but that's just me being a late-adopter, as usual.