Saturday, October 15, 2016

Gotta Love A Library Sale!

Hundreds of people, thousands of books, dozens of tables... it was a sea of books and readers. I was home!

On Friday I went to my city's library sale, an annual tradition that I don't always get to attend, but try to as often as possible. It takes place in a cavernous room most often used for agricultural displays, or home renovation displays. It echoes with voices and laughter and the line of people checking out with boxes and bags of books snakes back ten or twenty feet at its shortest. There are people  representing every age group, from a baby no more than a few days old carried by its mother in a snuggly front carrier, to an elderly woman shuffling along in a wheelchair.

There were moms with kids and thousands and thousands of children's and YA books - a sight I love to see. I was a huge reader as a child, and my advice always is, if you want to raise a writer, raise a reader. People eavesdropped on conversations and a stranger would shove a book across the table, with a surreptitious, 'I heard you were looking for this,' or 'how about this one?'

It was like coming home, finding my people. Hallelujah!

And I came away with gems. At a UBS or thrift shop the books would have cost me, conservatively, a hundred to two hundred bucks, but instead, it cost me twenty seven.

So... readers, never apologize for buying used books. Never be shy about it either. I got 3 Anne Perry books, a Diane Mott Davidson, and Ann Purser - whose books I have never read but look forward to trying - and more non-fiction historical books than I can hope to read! The picture doesn't even show the cookbooks I got.

It was a very good haul. The library cleared out their shelves and made some cash. A good day all around.

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