kristen

“I hate the word homophobia. It’s not a phobia. You’re not scared. You’re an asshole.”

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”

“One of the saddest things in life is that the only thing we can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. We can’t eat for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours a day. All we can do for eight hours a day is work.”

How do you fund this blog? I find it unlikely (though not impossible) that you're just a random bibliophile accumulating and distributing classics to the entire world.

This post is three years old, so it’s probably a good time for an update. A lot has changed. I’ve now given away 700+ books, and they’ve gone to 17 different countries: Argentina * Bosnia and Herzegovina * Brazil * Bulgaria * Canada * Chile * France * India * Ireland * Mexico * North Macedonia * Philippines * Portugal * Serbia * Spain * UK * USA * You can always see my latest giveaways (including the two current ones) by using the tag: giveaway. You can also click here to see the announcements of all of our winners, along with photos of the books from our winners once they’ve been received. I’m really hoping some of those 700+ books have become favorites to those who received them. Giving away classic literature in the form of physical, vintage books brings me more joy than you can imagine. If you’ve been following me for a while, you can see how passionate I am about this. I’ve been giving away books through my Tumblr since 2015. There were years that I lost my job and was out of work for long stretches. But the giveaways continued, even when it was difficult to afford it. During one of these stretches, I became an Amazon affiliate. I outlined how that works in my note above, but to summarize: I get a 4% affiliate’s fee anytime someone clicks on one of my links to get to Amazon, fills their cart (as usual), and checks out… just like they always do. There’s no change to the routine other than clicking one of my links to actually get to Amazon in the first place. And this applies not just to the books I link to but to all the products you purchase. I became an affiliate as a way to try to help offset a fraction of the costs of shipping internationally. The books themselves aren’t too expensive because I source them through second-hand bookstores and library book sales. The domestic (US) shipments aren’t too expensive because I can use media mail rates. But the international shipping costs are crippling. The cost for a single international shipment of 10 - 15 books is almost always between $65.00 to $80.00 USD. Here’s the cost of the shipment to our latest winner. 

“The moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever for the better. It’s an enormous force for good.”