We are about to embark on one of my family’s favorite adventures—a used book sale. This one, run by the Somerset Hills Association of American University Women, is one of the largest in our area and has been one of the richest troves recently.
We usually go on Friday evening, when it is pretty quiet, but have never been there on the last day (Saturday til 3 pm). The children are fondly anticipating a bag sale.
Coincidentally, I spent a chunk of this past week reorganizing our bookshelves in our school area. This should have had three effects: 1) make room for new books by weeding out old, with the idea that we only bring something into the house if we take an equal quantity out; 2) uncover all of the lovely books that we have that we have not had time to read, and organize them by subject so that I can make a plan; 3) remind me how many of our finds are just languishing on the shelves unread.
Instead, we had this effect: 1) Two bags of books probably will be donated somewhere. We did not make the donation cutoff for this book sale—only Greg did, and has thus earned the right to bring back about six boxes of books. Perhaps we could start a family clearinghouse to market stuff credits, along the lines of the pollution credits that corporations exchange?
2) We uncovered a lot of books, and I marvel at how many treasures we have. Through the years I have discovered some of my favorite authors from used book fairs: We discovered works by Helen Cresswell, “The Bagthorpe Series” on a table of book discards at the Plainfield Public Library during one of our visits. A discarded children’s reading textbook, decades old, yielded up Eleanor Farjeon’s “Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep”, which was so beautifully written that I began watching for her work.
Our first big family booksale, and Joey’s first outing as a baby, was at a Plainfield Friends of the Library Sale. There Anna found a complete course in art appreciation published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, complete with plates and dust jackets, for ten dollars. I have collected a number of beautiful art books since then for pennies, including details of the Sistine Chapel, the work of Rembrandt, Picasso, and a number of gallery pamphlets for modern artists, at the AAUW sale.
Many of our best finds came from Plainfield Library sales,which is no surprise, considering what a cultural center Plainfield has been. When the library shed the vinyl record collection, we acquired our music collection. We also found a number of Caedmon recordings of poets reading their own work (50cents per LP). If I could rig a machine to record CDs from albums I would give these far more use; it is hard to find twenty minutes to sit still and listen.
3) By the end of the week, we had uncovered many languishing books, but already family members were squirreling them off to their individual bookshelves—Lena with Calculus books, Billy with anything remotely related to debate, as they work in anticipation of the fall.
Our homeschooling friends remind each other of upcoming book sales and compare finds. We would love to hear from any gentle readers who would like to share a book sale triumph. What is your favorite book sale? What is your favorite/ best find so far?
(Martine)
2 responses so far ↓
1 Piseco // Aug 19, 2008 at 7:55 pm
We love used book sales. When I was young, my family made a special point to attend the Penn State AAUW sale - held in the student union or some years the ag arena. We usually attended each day, finding new treasures unearthed as the books on top were purchased. Our rule was you could only buy what you could carry… or push… or drag… or otherwise move *by yourself* up to the checkout.
2 Martine // Aug 20, 2008 at 1:23 am
Thanks. The part about “carry, push or drag” reminds me of many book sales when our children were younger. The rule still works for us! What’s your favorite or most memorable book sale find?
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