Fall Library Booksale

I was there early enough to queue up with a long line of either elderly people or stay-at-home moms. The lady behind me had driven all the way from Jonesboro to get to this sale! (Folks...really. Shopping carts and full suitcases and the strollers are bad enough; someone brought a full-sized wagon to put their books in...not a little Radio Flyer, but a big honkin' wagon like this! 40 inches long in aisles narrower than an old dollar store. Seriously?) Once they started letting people in, I switched lines (there were two) to get in the one for the children's books. Again, very few old books, and what they had was mostly nonfiction.

It's a good thing the books are cheap. I thought I needed a certain country in the World Book "Christmas Around the World" series, as the copy I bought was falling apart, and the only one of these books that were at the sale was the one I thought I needed. Serendipity, right? No, dang, it was the Netherlands I needed. Well, this one will "re-home" well.

I found six different copies of the Augsberg "Christmas" annuals, which are part religious, and part essays about subjects relating to Christmas, like composers or animals, etc. A little like "Ideals." (There were a big pile of "Christmas Ideals," but these were the old ones, with the so-so artwork and photos, so I skipped them. I miss the Thanksgiving Ideals editions! They always had such lovely photos.) I also got National Geographic's Christmas in Williamsburg, which sells for an incredible $18 full price since it's only sixty pages, pretty much brand new for a dollar.

Also found a book James might like, and one that a couple friends might like; I need to ask if they have it. A Little Golden Book of a certain title, as a joke gift.

 Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie, the one "Dear America" book I wanted that I didn't have

 Outlaw Red, at last (a sequel to Kjelgaard's Big Red and Irish Red)

 Happy Christmas, an anthology I'd taken out of the library previously

 The Fairy Caravan, one of Beatrix Potter's last books; not one of her "little books," as she called them, but a chapter book about a circus

 A much better copy of The Trouble with May Amelia by Jennifer Holm, because the copy I bought last year looked like mice had chewed it

 An Enid Blyton school story, because I've heard about these for years and wanted to see what one was like; Harry Potter, everyone says, was pretty much based on British school stories like Blyton's and the Chalet School books (and Angela Brasil, who I have read and enjoyed)

And two real prizes:

 Liza Picard's Restoration London; I have her Victorian London and have considered Elizabethan London

 And a falling-apart but topping book from 1927 called The British Boys' Annual, with a collection of sports/adventure/factual articles

Alas, no miracles this time like finding a hardback copy of The Singing Tree or the book I'd currently like to get (although I doubt if it would be there): a collection of Eric Knight's letters from Hollywood, but...fair enough.