Older Daughter caught wind of a library sale being held in a tiny nearby town. We made plans to go, though to be honest we didn't expect much. The town is small and isolated. How big could the sale be?
While we made plans to arrive at the opening of the sale, we didn't anticipate much competition. After all, how many other bibliophiles were there in this small and isolated town?
We were happily surprised on both counts. Not only was the selection extremely large for a library that size...
...but it seemed every homeschooling family for miles around had arrived to pick over the books. Yes! It was wonderful to see so many kids. (As we were checking out, a little boy belonging to the family ahead of us was clutching a small but old book against his chest protectively, very proud of the fact that he had paid for it with his own money. I don't know what the book was, but the kid looked over the moon.)
Ahem, I came home with a carton-full. Total cost? Eight dollars.
It's just so hard to resist a library sale.
I also love library book sales. My husband says that I like to rescue books :) When my daughter was around 9 years old she said she one day wanted to live in a library. My husband told her to look around our house and that she already did :)
ReplyDeleteLove book sales, hard to resist. Looks like you got some treasures
ReplyDeleteYou make me laugh Patrice. Your abundant joy over books is wonderful to see.
ReplyDeleteSomething strange happening to libraries. I live in a very large metropolitan area about 4-5 million. I went to two large libraries near me looking for some books. The same kinds of books I would find in the last city I lived in with under 50K residents. These are both large buildings with room for millions of books. But the shelves are nearly empty. I mean perhaps 10 books on a single vertical set of shelves that could easily hold a few hundred book. An entire aisle with maybe 100-200 books with room for 5000 books. I went back to the electronic catalog and searched by call number for a particular subject area I would find no books. If I searched by title or subject I would find books in the catalog but they were not in the library. For example book on foraging, none. Ditto for some other subject areas that I was interested in. Very strange.
ReplyDeleteDo you have many live auctions/estate sales in your area? We have several a month here in my region and many have books, especially older and harder to find ones and nobody wants them. You can get boxes of books for $1, many times they don't even sell. We got 80 old milk crates full of books for $100 last summer at an auction, mainly because we wanted the milk crates and it was sold as a lot, but found many complete book sets and many treasures in the mix, the rest we didn't want we put in boxes by the road with a free sign and all but about 3 boxes worth disappeared that we ended up taking to a thrift store. To finish off sets when I'm just missing a couple books, I tend to get them from thriftbooks or abebooks online. I'm a person who cannot handle missing just 1 or 2 books from a set.
ReplyDeleteBook lover here, too! I love library and church book sales. Oh the treasures I have walked away with for a mere couple bucks! Sometimes free!
ReplyDeleteI will totally understand if you don’t post this comment, or need to edit it. This post about your recent used book haul got me thinking that I may just have to start seeking out old books, and quit reading newer fiction. I am more or less sending this information to you because of you being a writer and a voracious reader. I think your opinion, and whatever information you find out would be very interesting, possibly something that you could write a blog post about, or maybe an article on WND.
ReplyDeleteWithin the last year or two it seems almost every new-ish novel I have attempted to read includes some form of LGQBT…(I could be missing some letters). I use several different book review sites to find books that seem like I might enjoy, then keep a running “Books To Read” list. These review sites are mainstream, and I’ve used them for decades, such as Indie Bound (Independent booksellers site), book review bloggers, some news sites, or general audience magazine book review sections.
Alternative sexual preference in a novel seems like it used to be few and far between, or a minor part of a story. Just this year I’ve had at least eight novels that I started to read and right up front there were in-your-face alternative sex characters, and encounters. I’m not naive and I can deal with lots of different fictional settings but for the life of me I couldn’t see why this had to be included in these particular stories. Most of the time I never made it past the first chapter in these books. I have now learned that after reading a review, for a book that interests me, I need to check the book’s listing in something such as a library catalog for the subject matters included in that book. I don’t know if all publishers list the alternative sex subjects (such as transgenderism) but I have seen some for individual books I have researched on my library’s online catalog. I can’t believe I have to go through all this just to find non-woke fiction.
I wonder if authors feel they will increase their audience, thus book sales, if they include these characters and situations? Or, could it be that publishers are requesting authors to include this? Yes, there’s the liberal political push for this so there’s that angle. Even though I have had success in finding review sites for Christian and Amish fiction I don’t want to read only those genres. I read everything, from your Amish books, Debbie Macomber, and other “gentle reads” to violent terrorism spy thrillers. I did an internet search for non-woke fiction review sites and only found one, Conservative Fiction dot com. Here’s a link that offers an interview of the woman who is developing the Conservative Fiction web site. I’d love to know what you think of all this.
https://bleedingfool.com/interviews/new-site-will-be-your-one-stop-shop-for-un-woke-fiction/
That looks like a great sale! Some of my most cherished books are ones my parents let me get at our library book sales when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteOur adult daughter Beth was recently reading a book while things were slow at the gas station where she works. A man came up to her to thank her for reading. He said his young daughter asked him why was reading. He told her that Beth wanted to get smarter and learn things. His daughter replied that SHE was going to read because she wanted to get smarter, too. Books are pretty cool. 💗
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