It’s inevitable that we occasionally make bad choices in life. Sometimes these involve calorie intake, sometimes they are to do with credit cards, or tattoos; other times you wish you hadn’t decided to have sex on a futon without adequate cushioning for the lower vertebrae. Every so often, you might make a bad choice when browsing in a bookshop and buy something featuring dragons purely because it was included in the 3 for 2 offer.

Do not panic!

You can totally offload all your shit at Read It Swap It, a site which allows you to exchange second-hand books with readers across the UK. (BookMooch is a similar service.)

I joined up a few weeks ago, and promptly listed a few of my more unloved books, including a collection of Seamus Heaney poems that was the catalyst to my dropping out of my English degree in 2004, and a quasi-political look at the 1990’s Britpop phenomenon. As I was listing them (you do it by ISBN, so it’s super-quick), I was like ‘who the fuck is still interested in this crap?’ but lo, within twenty-four hours I’d had a handful of requests. There are some crazy people out there.

When one of your books is requested by a user, you log in to browse through their list of available titles, and once you confirm a choice you both trot happily off the the Post Office and send your books using second-class post. Obviously, if everything they’ve got on offer is a bunch of crap, there is a handy ‘bunch of crap’ button that you are free to click. As a new user, you are limited to the number of requests you can make, but then, it’s taken me about a week to finish the first chapter of Money by Martin Amis, so it’s not like there are enough hours in the day anyway.

So, since joining up in mid-June, I’ve received these little beauties:

Douglas Coupland - Microserfs (1996)

This is about staff at Microsoft, and the back cover has the synopsis and blurb in little gray windows. It’s like when you watch Hackers and all their graphics are from like, the beginning of time. Before computer dudes learned how to put rounded corners on shit anyways.

Herman Hesse - Gertrude (1973)

I’ve never read any Hesse before, and I thought this would be as good a place as any to start, especially since the name Gertrude always makes me think of gooseberries, and I really like gooseberries.

Nick Hornby - How To Be Good (2001)

There is a copy of this book in every second-hand bookshop in every town in the world. I hope this is not a bad sign, but I could only resist it for so long.

Laurie Lee - Cider With Rosie (1964)

Can it possibly be as good as Cider With Roadies by Stuart Maconie?

Somerset Maugham - The Moon and Sixpence (1961)

This baby’s got a really pungent booksmell. Also, Somerset is a really cool name.

Iris Murdoch - The Unicorn (1970)

I read The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch and really enjoyed it, so I reckon this is a pretty safe bet. There Bond-girl-with-binoculars cover image may yet be a candidate for The Thumb Galleries.

Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler’s Wife (2005)

I’ve lost count of the number of times this book has been recommended to me.

Ali Smith - Girl Meets Boy (2007)

This is a reworking of some story about a dude called Ovid, but it’s by Ali Smith so it could feasibly be a reworking of a crate of steaming dog shit and it would still be amazing.