Books, Books, and More Books!

The Friends of the Jefferson Parish Library had their Giant Spring Book Sale this past weekend. This is a Big Event around our house. We prepare for it in advance by combing through our shelves and making lists of what we already have (in an effort to reduce duplicates) and what we want to look for. When the first day of the sale dawns, we gather boxes and bags and a trolly, and set forth on the Great Book Hunt.
I don't need any more books. I already have more books than I could ever read before I die (it seriously saddens me to realize this). But I can't resist these book sales. What do I look for? Leather bound copies of classics, so that I can throw out my ratty old paperbacks.
I also look for hardcover editions of favorite novels--the ones I once read from the library or bought in paperback before I realized they were keepers. This year I was thrilled to find hardcover editions of both my favorite Mary Stewart romantic suspense from when I was a teenager and the Kathleen Woodiwiss that first made me fall in love with sexy historical romances. And I also snagged a Wynwood Press  first bookclub edition of Grisham's A Time To Kill. If it were a regular first edition, it would be worth $5,000, but the bookclub edition is still worth $3-400. Not that I have any intention of selling it, of course. It's all part of the fun.

What else did I get? A book of eighteenth century English poetry. Virginia Woolf's diary. A collection of Dorothy Sayers short stories. A hardcover of James Lee Burke's A Stained White Radiance. A lovely leather bound edition of The Education of Henry Adams (I'll probably start with this one, since I loved his Mont Saint Michel and Chartres; this is his autobiography). Two big boxes full, in all (counting Steve's additions). Now I need to comb through my shelves in an effort to make room for them, because new bookcases are out of the question: we have run out of walls.

There really is such a thing as too many books.