Booksale Booty

Usually I have a large backlog of books to read when I find the time, but over the last month or two that reading pile had dwindled to almost nothing. So when my friend Tim mentioned that he was going to a large booksale in Princeton, NJ this week, I thought I'd like to go too, and restock. Ellen was also interested, and took the day off work so the two of us could make the two hour drive north to Princeton to meet Tim at the sale.

Like many large booksales it's an annual event that raises money for some good cause. This one is the Bryn Mawr and Wellesley Booksale, organized by graduates of those two schools in Pennsylvania to fund scholarships to them. The sale actually began on Wednesday, which they call Preview Day, and to get into it then costs $20. Now, for Tim and us, the whole point of booksales is to save money and get books cheaply, so we had no interest in doing that. Thursday was also not good for us, and we decided to go on Friday. Tim has been to this sale before on Friday, and said there were still plenty of books left, so it sounded promising, and as you can see above, it turned out well for us. The three piles in the back are Ellen's books, the rest are mine. Most were found in the Children's Books section of the sale, which was quite large and with a great selection, even on the third day. I saw quite a few fine books there I have in my own library from other sales, but ones that I've rarely or never seen since. I also found some I wanted in the Science Fiction section, and one or two elsewhere.

There were a few I bought that I've already read and reviewed here: "A Canticle for Liebowitz" and "Red Mars," two Tim had lent me that I liked well enough to want on my own shelves, a very nice first edition hardcover with dustjacket of "Bedknob and Broomstick" by Mary Norton to replace my crumbling book-club edition, and a hardcover with dustjacket of Robert Heinlein's "Citizen of the Galaxy." It's not a first edition, and is ex-library, but still, it'd be hard to find one like it for sale for less than $40 online, and was a great bargain for $1. It will sit happily on my shelf with other Heinlein hardcovers I've collected, and replace the paperback edition I have.

Other books bought were to read. One, "Preacher's Boy" by Katherine Paterson is a signed copy, another nice find for $2. I've been thinking of reading more of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, so bought five of those, found a few by Lloyd Alexander I didn't have, a few others by authors I like, and some I just chose because they sounded interesting. You'll see many of them show up in reviews here over the next year or so, I imagine.

The only downside to book sales, when you already have a house full of books, is finding places to put them all! I guess we can manage to do that.