Gav takes a seat on his book throne creation

When Gavin Rodgers isn’t working in the Better World Books scanning department he’s reading. When he walks past to go on break or leave for the day he already has his nose in a book. He reads at least one book a day, sometimes more. That’s a minimum of 365 books a year, something most of us can only dream of achieving!

You could say that Gav getting a job at Better World Books was meant to be. He initially took the job as a Warehouse Associate in our shipping team because he liked the charitable aspect of the company (every book that we sell funds literacy). In the 3 years that he’s been here, Gav has been able to get involved with the company’s literacy mission. Each year he’s helped to review the Better World Books Literacy Grant applications. He’s really enjoyed reading about the varied projects and seeing what people are doing in their communities to promote and improve literacy. For him, it’s great to know that he is making a difference.

Better World Books CEO Mike Miller checks out the book throne on a visit to the UK

Gav also lives up to the company’s environmental values. While Better World Books never sends books to landfill, Gav goes one step further and has kept every book he’s had for the past 18 years! He re-reads the books (science fantasy is his favourite genre) and turns damaged books into furniture. His bedside table is made from books, even his bookcases are all books and his next project is to make a bed from books. You could say that he’s the ultimate book rescuer!

Those creative skills were recently put to use to create a book throne for the Better World Books library. Gav has ambitions to make it bigger and better, but we’ve just been thrilled to show it off to all of our visitors who can pose for a #BWBBookThroneSelfie! We’re happy to make sure that Gav has access to an endless supply of books (employees can take home books destined for recycling at a nominal £0.20/book). It’s great to see someone that loves reading so much, and hopefully he inspires some of the children (and adults!) that visit us for our World Book Day and Book or Boo! community events.