Start with the Books You Already Own

Before you spend a penny, gather every book in the house. You will almost certainly find more than you expect: paperbacks from holidays, cookery books abandoned after one recipe, childhood favourites in a box under the bed, two copies of the same Dickens novel bought in a fit of good intentions at a village fete.

Pile them all in one room and sort them into three groups: keep, give away and undecided. Be honest. A home library is not a storage facility, and a shelf filled with books you will never open again is simply furniture with a guilt complex. Give the give-aways to a charity shop, a community book swap or a neighbourhood phone-box library, and you have both cleared space and done somebody a good turn.

The undecided pile can go back on a shelf for now. If you have not reached for any of them in a year, they belong in the next clear-out.

Charity Shops: The Backbone of a Budget Library

Charity shops remain the single best source of cheap reading in Britain, and the pleasure is in the hunt rather than the transaction. A few habits will sharpen your luck considerably.

• Learn your local circuit. Most towns have five or six charity shops within a short walk of one another. Visit on the same day each week so you catch new stock before it is picked over.
• Check the back of the shop. Many branches keep overspill stock in crates, on a bottom shelf, or in a back room. It is always worth asking politely what else they have.
• Look past the bestsellers. The tatty spine with a faded jacket is often the interesting one. Paperbacks are usually between fifty pence and two pounds; hardbacks rarely more than three.
• Follow the classics. Penguin and Oxford editions turn up constantly, are well made and often contain notes and introductions worth reading in their own right.
• Buy in bundles where offered. A "three for a pound" box is a gift for anyone building a shelf from scratch.

Car boot sales, jumble sales and church fêtes are the other great hunting grounds, and the small admission fee is usually worth it. Go early for the best stock, and take cash in small notes.

Swaps, Community Shelves and Free Sources

You do not need money at all for a good portion of a home library. Book swapping is thriving across the UK, and it suits readers who want variety rather than permanence.

Community bookcases appear in railway stations, cafés, pubs, village halls and converted telephone boxes. The etiquette is simple: take one, leave one, and do not treat the shelf as a rubbish tip for damaged paperbacks. Local library sales and "friends of the library" tables are another steady source, often selling withdrawn stock for pennies, sometimes with the added charm of an old date stamp inside the cover.

Freecycle-style giving networks, house clearances and the "free to a good home" box outside a neighbour's gate all play their part. When a friend finishes a book you fancy, simply ask. Most readers are delighted to pass one on, and a book with a story about how you got it is worth more than a pristine copy from a chain shop.

Shelving That Costs Very Little

The furniture is where budgets quietly disappear, so resist the urge to buy a matching bookcase. Almost anything flat and sturdy will do.

• Scaffold boards on brackets. A length of scaffold board, sanded and given a coat of wax or paint, makes a handsome shelf. Two or three brackets per board, fixed into studs or masonry, will hold a serious weight.
• Bricks and boards. Unglamorous but effective, and endlessly rearrangeable. Stack bricks or concrete blocks, rest boards across them, and you have shelving in an afternoon.
• Wall-mounted picture ledges. Excellent for paperbacks and for showing off jackets. A paperback is about two centimetres thick, so a metre of ledge holds a surprising number.
• Wine crates and apple boxes. Stacked on their sides and screwed together, they make rustic, characterful units. Ask at a local shop or market for spares.
• Alcoves and chimney breasts. Many British homes have a recess begging for shelves. Measure twice, and remember that a shelf deeper than about twenty-five centimetres is mostly wasted space.

Always fix shelving into something solid. A shelf of hardbacks is heavy, and a collapsed bookcase is a sad and dangerous thing.

Arranging and Caring for Your Collection

There is no single correct way to arrange a home library. Alphabetical order suits reference books; colour arrangement looks cheerful and helps you find a familiar jacket at a glance; thematic shelves — travel, nature, history, poetry — encourage browsing. Choose whatever makes you want to take a book down.

Spine out is best for most books, but a few front-facing titles will draw the eye and break up a wall of text. Use bookends, and avoid cramming volumes in so tightly that you damage the spines when pulling them out.

Keep shelves out of direct sunlight, which fades jackets and yellows pages, and away from radiators and damp walls. Dust occasionally with a soft cloth, and store anything valuable flat rather than upright. Second-hand books often arrive with a faint smell of old paper; a few days in a dry, airy room usually settles it.

Making the Corner Welcoming

A library is more than storage. It should be somewhere you actually want to sit.

Start with light. A second-hand armchair or a good upright chair with a firm cushion is the foundation, then add a lamp positioned over your shoulder rather than in your eyes. A small side table holds a mug, a notebook and the book you are currently reading, which deserves the most accessible spot on the shelf.

A rug warms the floor, a wool blanket keeps a winter evening comfortable, and a single plant brings the corner to life. If space is tight, a narrow bench under a window, a stack of floor cushions or a deep windowsill will do the same job.

Build slowly, buy second-hand, and let the collection reflect your own reading rather than somebody else's idea of a library. The best shelves are the ones that look lived in, and yours will be worth far more than the few pounds it cost to assemble.