Riley is in a particularly wonderful stage right now...she ABSOLUTELY LOVES to read books!  Every month, my husband and I take her to the local used bookstore and we raid the Clearance section for anything that will catch Riley's fancy.  Since I am quite the online shopper and don't always want to be at the mercy of the Clearance section's selection at my local bookstore, I am glad I've found McKenzie Books.

*** UPDATE ***

As of today, May 13, 2010, McKenzie Books now has author & title combo search functionality, as well as the following for our BRAIN feature.  Also, BRAIN™ will recognize your search term as an ISBN and show you the title!  No more lists of just numbers in your BRAIN™ alerts list.  And lastly, the BRAIN™ tips at the bottom of the page will be selected from a random list of tips.

*** END  OF UPDATE ***

McKenzie Books is an online used bookstore offering used books of all kinds, including TEXTBOOKS!  As a former college student, I still remember how expensive those things can be and how it was absolutely dreadful if you had to buy your textbook new!  The great thing about McKenzie Books is that they have a book alert feature called the "BRAIN" whereby you can have them notify you whenever the title, author or ISBN number of your choice comes in.

I set one of these alerts sup because I'm currently looking for a large print version of Stephen King's, "It", for my husband.  The only problems I've found with the BRAIN are that they don't have a place on their own site where you can look up ISBN numbers.  I typed in Stephen King "It" Large Print, but since they didn't currently have it, I had to go to google.com to try and find the ISBN number to input into the BRAIN.  Come to find out, I don't think they ever made this book in large print, so I tried to just find Stephen King's "It" on McKenzie Books.

Their site lets you search by title, ISBN or author, but there's no way to distinguish what you are actually typing in, so you tend to get back a ton of search results.  This was particularly frustrating, for I had to go back to google.com to find the ISBN number for Stephen King's "It" to input into the BRAIN.  If I tried typing in Stephen King It, the BRAIN wouldn't let me do that and I had to leave it at Stephen King.  Now, I don't want an alert every time a Stephen King book comes in, because he's written about a million of them.

I think that the BRAIN feature would be much better if you could distinguish what you were inputting, either ISBN, Title or Author.  This is also true of the main search engine on their site.  Right now, the only definite way to search for the book you want and not get a ton of invalid results, is by ISBN number, which you have to go off-site to look up.

I would also like to see a recommended books feature added based on the title you're currently looking at.  For instance, I know there are a ton of great children's books out there, but I need a little help picking out something for my daughter.  I wish that once I found a book I'm interested in, the site would suggest others I might enjoy.

McKenzie Books is a terrific resource when you want to save a little dough by buying your books used.  They even offer some new selections as well.  You'll get free shipping on any purchase over $25, and if there's a college student in your life or even if you home-school, I highly suggest giving McKenzie Books and the BRAIN a chance to find those textbooks you've been looking for.

Since this week is Teacher Appreciation week, I also wanted to share with you the 15% discount that McKenzie Books gives to educators!  Stop by McKenzie Books and see if they can't stretch your book budget dollars a bit.