Books so cheap it really is Bananas! (bananas.co.uk)

Member Name: azana

Product:	bananas.co.uk
Date:	19/05/09 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Greatly reduced books

Disadvantages: Stock varies

Bananas is the clearance website for The Bookpeople - who you may be familiar with as providing cheap books through their website and also often through a buy-on-sight scheme that visits many workplaces and schools. The Book People have been going since 1988, but the clearance website is a newer venture, set up last year I believe.

The website is to be found at www.bananas.co.uk, and this is a website only shop. At first sight it is a bit cheap and cheerful, with pictures of monkeys and bananas everywhere, but it is easy to navigate through the categories of Fiction, Non-fiction and Children's. You can see the books on offer in the various categories and the price reduction. The home page also lists "fastest movers" and "best reductions" - some of the books are reduced by as much as 92 percent of the rrp.

Being a clearance site, they do say that stock changes regularly, and from my experience I would say that this is true. When you browse through the site there are some books that you definitely think "hmmm I can see why they are trying to flog that off!", but also some real jewels. I have seen great collections of children's books for a price that makes them ideal party bag fodder, and there are some interesting books on offer in the adult fiction section too.

A recent order of mine included an entire set of 6 "Winnie the Witch" books and CD for £8.00, my daughter had been asking for these for ages and they are £5 a time on Amazon. I also bought 3 novels for myself at £3.50, some workbooks for £3.50 and a really great 3-D "about the body" book for £2. Often books are priced for as little as 50p, and the sets are very good value indeed.

If you are a bookpeople customer you will probably recognise some of the stock on offer, but at greatly reduced prices. Sometimes the books are massively reduced as they are a hardback copy, but if there happens to be a cookbook that catches your eye then there are undoubtedly some deals to be had. I always find something to tempt - we are bookworms in this house and probably have too many books, but I always seem to be able to find space for more to my husband's disgust!

Delivery is free over £25. I would say that delivery times are similar to the Book People - I assume that they use the same systems - in any case my orders are normally delivered within the week and I get an email to inform me of my order status.

I can thoroughly recommend this website, only be warned it is a little bit fatal - you can end up with lots of books at second hand prices practically - my most recent order contained 30 books in total for £27 including delivery - bananas indeed!

Summary: A clearance website for the Book People