It is beyond doubt that the reformed pinoy loves books. Few things make us more excited than getting a box from J&T containing a bunch of theological or puritan works. Unfortunately, it is also a hard reality that the kind of life we have in our country does not always provide us with an excess budget to buy books. Inflation is always a problem and there are always more important bills to pay and budget for. Add to that the costly price of quality theological books available locally which makes it difficult for the reformed pinoy to purchase books and build up their personal libraries.
In this article, we would like to provide some tips on how to build your library without having to break your wallet. There are ways for us to have access to books without sacrificing our budget for our next meal.
Go Digital
One of the easiest ways to build up a library is by collecting e-books. Here are several sites that provide free or cheap e-books for your library:
A Puritan’s Mind has free e-books on the works of the puritans including the complete sets by Owen, Manton, Flavel, Brooks, etc. and the commentary of Matthew Henry.
Monergism.com has perhaps the largest collection of reformed e-books which include works of the reformers, the puritans, and more modern writers like JC Ryle, AW Pink, Whitefield, Warfield, etc.
Logos. Install the free version of logos in your device. The free version comes with two bibles, a commentary, lexicons, bible dictionaries, etc. What’s more, Logos itself often offers steep discounts on books and commentaries.
Desiring God. Majority of John Piper’s books can be downloaded for free including the latest such as 27 Servants of Sovereign Joy, 50 Crucial Questions, and All That Jesus Commanded.
Amazon’s Kindle. There are many cheap and free resources on Amazon for Kindle. Unfortunately, we could not find a list of the links to these free resources but here are some examples:
Other sites such as Crossway and Reformed Heritage Books occasionally offer books for free or almost free. Watch out especially for Crossway’s 99 cent book sale! Here is a free e-book (as of this writing) from RHB: A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel (Colquhoun)
Check out the page Delighting Grace. They regularly post a round-up of free resources.
The Allison Library at Regent College. While these cannot be downloaded, digitized copies of JI Packer's puritan collection can be read online.
Buy Them Cheap or Get Them Free
Here are some ways to help build up your physical library:
Chapel Library. Sign up and they will give you a 20$ credit per month which you can use to “buy” a book and get some booklets. They will ship for free! Doing this monthly can easily add 12 books a year to your library without any cost. Also most of the books on the site can be downloaded and can add to your digital library.
Local resellers that provide cheap books:
SHELFish Interests. Has some of the lowest prices on quality books.
QuickFlip Thriftbooks. Provides books for just a small margin over Booksale prices.
Kian’s Trove. Has used and new books for relatively cheaper prices.
Booksale. While it is often difficult to find quality reformed books in Booksale, spending some time combing through the piles of books will yield a treasure once in a while.
Treasuring Christ PH. This ministry offers translated and local reprints of some reformed books at a much cheaper price! Many of their resources can also be downloaded.
CGM Literature. Among their local reprints are reformed books such as What is Reformed Theology by RC Sproul, Puritan Portraits by JI Packer, and Hole in our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung.
Join raffles! Many local pages such as iDisciple Philippines, Kian’s Trove, and (we heard) Reformed Pinoy conduct raffles once in a while.
We hope that these resources help you build up your library and stir you up to more readings and study. Just remember that reading is not an end in itself and is meant to be an act of worship. So the more books we have, the more we study, and the more we worship and glorify God. Soli deo Gloria!
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