33 Books for $5.25!
No joke. I bought 33 books today for $5.25. My local library system’s Friends of the Library sells used books to fund library programs and events, such as the summer concert series, various classes and events. They provide awards for reading programs and so forth. I have always learned about the book sale after the fact. This time I found out in time to go and planned accordingly.
All the books are used, either donated or library discards and you never know what you are going to find. Books in the warehouse were $1.00 a bag. Everything else was half price. By bag they mean normal sized shopping bag, plastic, paper, or reusable. You can fit a lot of books in a brown paper bag if you know how to pack them.
I woke up early and arrived not long after they opened. I’m not going to lie, I expected to find more books. There would have been more books had I been there the second the doors opened, as others did. I should have also gone to half price day on Monday to get the best pick of books. Whatever.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the Friends of the Library Bookstore to be the hang out of the 80 and older group. I go into the bookstore every few weeks and it is not usually all that busy. Probably because it is only open 4 hours a day, from 10 to 2 as it’s staffed by volunteers. Not a convenient time for most people. I am also convinced that the 80 and older group only visit during the sale in order to stock up on books for rest of the year. One lady was sitting in a chair and had somewhere between 10 and 15 bags of books surrounding her. She was talking to a gentleman who had a few bags of books himself. The two of them and a few others were competing to see who walked away with the most books and who was the oldest of the group.
Another gentleman was there just to socialize and mentioned he’d not been to the bookstore in a while because of health reasons. In his words, “As you get older, stuff happens.” He’s not wrong. It was amusing watching him check out everything people were looking at, contemplating buying and then recommending it. I think he recommended every book he seen someone pick up. He would also tell people which ones he had autographed. Dude reads as much as I do. Just not something you ever expect to see someone do.
I still managed to fill 2 bags with books and found 3 others half price. Found a lot of YA science fiction, vampire books (a genre I read exclusively for a while), some fantasy, historical fiction, and some other odds and ends. Out of everything I ended up with 1 duplicate book and 2 books that were second in a series. Thriftbooks and free book credits solved that problem for me. I just have to wait for them to arrive. Nothing moves slower than book snail mail. Barnes and Noble is taking particularly long with the remaining books from March 14.
I have uploaded pictures of my bookhaul to Instagram, because pics or it didn’t happen. I also put up a video on YouTube going through everything I bought if anyone is interested. If you are expecting a clean and professional looking content creator type video, this isn’t going to be it. I am not that person…but you can see the tired English major that runs this blog.
