Got Books

• www.gotbooks.com

Got Books? Charity Warehouse
104 Glenn St.
Lawrence, MA 01843
Open Thursday, Friday, Saturday

• www.usedbooksuperstore.com

Got Books? Used Book Superstore

Burlington, MA: 256 Cambridge Street

Danvers, MA: 139 Endicott Street

Saugus, MA: Square One Mall

Nashua, NH: 293 D. Webster Highway

Salem, NH: 419 S. Broadway

Open Monday to Saturday, 10 AM-8 PM, Sunday 10 AM-6 PM

This group is a charity fund-raiser that raises funds for non-profit organizations – they're not a non-profit themselves, but they help raise money for local charities and community groups in northern Massachusetts. (They work with some religious groups, but they're not overtly religious themselves.) Unlike Goodwill and the Salvation Army, they specialize in books. They encourage people, businesses, schools, libraries, and anyone else to donate boxes and bundles of used books to them, and they sell them at dirt-cheap prices to raise money for their affiliated charities.

The Got Books? Charity Warehouse is open to the public on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and you can go there and browse literally thousands of used books, CDs, books on tape, videos (lots and lots of VHS tapes and a healthy sized DVD section). I'd rate the quality of this place as somewhat lower than a library sale, but higher than Goodwill. They have some shelves of books sorted by category (religion, biography, fiction, etc.) and other shelves with newly-donated books thrown onto them haphazardly, unsorted for the public to browse through. This section is the most popular part of the place.

As with any used-book store, there's a lot of crap to be found there…and several gems of true Bulldada! When my wife and I visited there on July 21, 2007, we managed to uncover such classics as The Geller Papers (a "scientific" report supporting the claims of Uri Geller); several books by Carl Sagan; a DVD series by the United States Post Office with warnings about various scams and cons (including Internet-based scams); a documentary about American Family Association founder Donald Wildmon called Damned in the USA; Pagan Pride, The Magdalene Legacy, The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook for the Holidays, assorted children's books for our nieces…and more!

August 17th, 2008: GOOD NEWS! Business has apparently been booming for Got Books? – so much so that they've opened a full-sized Used Book Superstore in Burlington, Massachusetts. Open six days a week (Tuesday through Sunday, closed on Mondays), this store has a much more family-friendly look (bright overhead lights, rugs, clean neat shelves, lots of chairs for people to sit on), and they they state that they're constantly moving large numbers of books through the new store all the time. Large segments of the store are expected to turn over within the space of a few weeks, so there's likely to be something new there every time you visit. What's more, the prices at the new store are still dirt-cheap: 10% of cover price! (I.E. a $25 book sells there for $2.50.)

Update as of 2011: The Used Book Superstore chain has been successful enough to expand into five stores in northern Massachusetts, though they did close down their original Lawrence charity bookstore location. The original mission of supporting local charities hasn't changed, though. This place is still a Bulldada treasure trove!