The sign in front of the local library branch lured me with a siren song I can never resist--the library book sale. Specifically, the bag sale, where for one price (in this case, $7.00) customers can fill a paper grocery bag with as many books as it can hold and they can carry. As a lover of both books and bargains, and with the convenient excuse of supporting the library, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
I headed for the mysteries, of course, but others targeted their own favorite categories. Romance. History. Science Fiction. Gardening. There was something for every reader. My other weakness at any library sale is the cookbooks, a section that provides not just culinary guidance but cultural history. One can track dietary trends through the titles that people have donated--Atkins, South Beach, low-fat, gluten-free, paleo, Whole30, keto. I also love flipping through those spiral-bound recipe collections sold as fundraisers by churches, schools, and women’s groups. And where I live, you can always find complete sets of Southern Living Annual Recipes, dating all the way back to 1979.
Such regional
preferences are a given at a sale stocked primarily by local donations, but some
authors are popular no matter where you live. At the sale I attended, an
overflow room had been set up just to accommodate the many, many copies of
works by the likes of James Patterson and Stephen King. It was like the cool
kids all hanging out together in the cafeteria, with no room at the table for
mid-list authors.
The only other section that competed in popularity with those mega-bestsellers was the children’s books. Parents and kids animatedly searched for treasures and loaded up their overflowing bags. For all the news stories about kids addicted to their screens, in my neck of the woods the local library sale is keeping the love of reading alive for another generation.
I didn’t pick up any kids’ books myself, but did manage to squeeze one last title into my paper bag: The Writer’s Complete Crime Reference Book. Finding it felt like my library supports my endeavors, just as I support theirs. And while this season’s bag sale is over, I know I will succumb when I hear that siren song again. Because my library and I share a commitment to a rewarding and mutually beneficial form of recycling : keeping books out of landfills and in readers’ hands.
Are you a
sucker for a library book sale? What do you fill your bag with there?
Our Friends of the Library has a different approach to our annual book sale: we ask people to pay what they want.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder. I was just about to take some books to the library for exactly this cause.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am a big donator of books that end up in the sale (especially once read hard covers) and support several library branches in other "friendly" ways, I'm not a book sale person as I either usually miss the weekend or (who knows?).
ReplyDeleteI have nice stacks of books for our library sale. But how many other stacks will I bring home?
ReplyDeleteWhat a fabulous idea! My local library has been considering a sale but it hasn’t happened yet. Sounds like I need to give them a nudge. Faced with a fill your bag situation--I'd put in books from genres I normally don't read simply to expand my horizons.
ReplyDeleteI love library book sales. Especially when they get to the "bag of books" stage, I look for popular books in good shape to donate to the library at the prison where I used to work. Their budget never begins to buy enough to meet the demand.
ReplyDeleteI love book sales, but particularly getting books at charity shops that are throughout England and Scotland, where I am right now. I just visited one yesterday in Greenock, Scotland, and found two books by a favorite British author. The shops support fantastic charities. This one supported the leukemia fund.
ReplyDeleteGrace Topping