A'Book Sale-ing...

It's hard to drag me out of bed these days. Except for two days ago; Friday I was up before the alarm, dressing, breakfasting, and "perambulating the pooch." What causeth such furor? What else? It was library book sale day!

Arrived there fifteen minutes early to find lines trailing out either end of the entrances to the Cobb County Civic Center. Since I've had such poor luck with the children's books since they moved from Jim Miller Park, I decided to start downstairs instead where all the nonfiction and hardback fiction was. Ended up in line behind an old hippie with a silvery ponytail wearing a cowboy hat. The usual complement of SAHMs and elderly were the majority of the crowd, dragging anything capable of holding a load: reusable shopping bags like me, luggage carriers, boxes on wheels, large suitcases, red wagons... The doors opened promptly at nine and off we went. After two hours upstairs and downstairs (finding nothing I'd hoped to find), there I was with

 The Corfu Trilogy, Gerald Durrell (reading this already; just don't expect it to be a lot like The Durrells in Corfu)

 Life Among the Savages/Raising Demons, Shirley Jackson (because I loved her short story "Charles" so much; part of a longer sequence in this book)

 Neither Wolf Nor Dog, Kent Herburn (man tours West with Native American guide; figure if I'm watching Molly of Denali I should also be learning more about other Native cultures)

 A Book of Christmas Folklore, Tristram P. Coffin (I've borrowed this from the library before, liked it enough to want to own it)

 Memorable Christmas Stories (book of short stories from a Mormon publisher; Chicken Soup for the Soul-type stuff)

 Letters from the Editor, the correspondence of Harold Ross (the original editor of "The New Yorker")

 Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, John Barry (one of the two Roger Williams books out there)

 Crossing Antarctica, Will Steger (by dogsled in 1990)

 Time to Be in Earnest, P.D. James ("fragments" of an autobiography, as she calls it)

If you know me, you also know that is never that. Yes, as soon as I finished all my chores today, I left James to his telephone calls and headed back over there about 12:30 p.m. Sunday is "box day," and no matter how big a box you bring in, you can fill it for $20. I just brought a shopping bag, and I'm a piker. I was in line behind the hippie with the ponytail again, and he had the box a combination TV/VCR came in (he must have been saving that a while!). Someone near the front of the line had a refrigerator box! In fact, several people in line had huge boxes and I feared for the books.

I needn't have feared: the people with the biggest boxes went straight to the CDs and DVDs and just swept them into the boxes with great sweeps of their arms and left the books alone. They are probably going to re-sell them on EBay, pawn them, or turn them in for credit or cash at places like 2nd and Charles or McKay's or CD Warehouse. (James thinks they are buying them for their own resale shops. I did always dream about having a used bookstore and picking up my original stock at library book sales.)

Anyway, the books were all left, in nice straight lines, for we searchers for the perfect read.

 More Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things by Reader's Digest (love these books; they're like peanuts, so I get them cheap)

 America Celebrates! A Patchwork of Weird & Wonderful Holiday Lore, Hennig Cohen and our old friend Tristram P. Coffin (wow! even Native American celebrations——all they missed was Day of the Dead)

 Travels, Michael Crichton (which I've been looking for at a booksale for ages; now if I could have only found a book on Dorothy Kilgallen...)

 Spice: The History of a Temptation, Jack Turner (not just for eating; the book opened to advice to guys on how to improve your sex life with a honey and ginger rub)

 Boston: A Social History, Brett Howard (Alcott, Holmes, and even Ponzi!)

 North to the Night, Alvah Simon (couple sails the Arctic Ocean)

 A Country Life: Scenes from a Veterinary Life, Douglas Whynott (I adore vet memoirs; this one takes place in New Hampshire)

 Thurber on Crime, James Thurber (the only fiction I bought, collection of Thurber shorts with a mystery theme, including my favorite "The Macbeth Murder Mystery")

I also bought, although it sounds kind of odd, a book called How to Care for Aging Parents. I am done with that, and James' mom is cared for very well and very ably by my sister-in-law, but I looked at it as "well, we're the aging ones now, so maybe there are some good tips for us." Maybe it sounds strange. Whatever.