At Last, The Book Sale

It's been two whole years, but finally there I was, back in line at the Cobb County Civic Center. (Unfortunately, in the sun.) It seemed like forever, but finally all of us (for there was a long, long line) were inside, doing what we do best, looking for "The Book" (what "The Book" is depends on the reader; it could be Western history or Jodi Picault or sewing books), that one that will just make your day. These were my finds:

  Ella of All of a Kind Family, Sidney Taylor (the last in Taylor's series about a Jewish family circa World War I in NYC)

  Weetamoo, Heart of the Pocassets and Victoria, May Blossom of Brittania, two of the "Dear America" "Royal Diaries" series

  The Journal of Jedediah Barstow: An Emigrant on the Oregon Trail and The Journal of Brian Doyle: A Greenhorn on an Alaskan Whaling Ship, two of the male journal versions of the "Dear America" books

  The Road to Somewhere, James Dodson (a man and his son tour Europe)

  The Thing With Feathers, Noah Strycker (from my Amazon wishlist, about birds)

  There and Back Again, Sean Astin's book

  An Irish Hostage, the latest in Charles Todd's Bess Crawford mysteries

  Atlas Obscura (Yay! Finally got one!)

  Drawn from New England, Bethany Tudor (Tasha Tudor's picture-and-word portrait of her mom)

and two Christmas books:

  Moravian Christmas in the South and Season's Greetings from the White House, the latter a history of the annual White House Christmas card

This Month's Theme...

So what's everyone reading for Women's History Month? The other day I corralled some of the women's nonfiction I have, and, of course, I have plenty of mystery stories with female protagonists. Alas, that means I can't read a Longmire book this month. 😊

I've already read Meg & Jo, Mary Poppins She Wrote, and the fourth "Noodle Shop" mystery (Wonton Terror), and, since I try to alternate fiction and nonfiction, thought it would be appropriate to go from an Asian mystery to Amy Tan's book Where the Past Begins. I have all sorts of choices after that: in fiction the latest paperback edition of one of the "Royal Spyness" mysteries, another "Witch City" mystery, another Flavia de Luce book, the resumption of Cleo Coyle's "Ghost" mysteries, even a book about BBC workers during the second World War; in nonfiction the second volume of Dorothy Sayers' letters, the final volume of Blanche Weisen Cook's Eleanor Roosevelt bio, Heather Lende's Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs, the book about Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret that got their nanny "Crawfie" fired, and more.

And, oh, goodness, the library book sale is next weekend... It's supposed to rain, so I must mull upon how to keep the books dry.

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.

Yet Another Book Sale--Coda

James went to his club meeting, so I went back to the book sale. (Yes, incorrigible is my middle name.) Ran into Clair and Daniel Kiernan there, in fact. Yes, I found more books.

• The President and the Assassin, about McKinley's death
• Curious New England, about odd things up in the northeast corner (and yes, Nibbles the Blue Bug on top of the New England Pest Control building in Providence is there)
• Mary Russell's War, all Laurie King's Mary Russell short stories
• Two, count 'em, two, books of commentary on James Thurber's work (Long and Mossberger)
• 1939: the Last Season of Peace, about the (social) season in Great Britain before the war broke out
• a book about Gus Grissom, ostensibly for James

and finally, Susan Allen Toth's My Love Affair With England—I thought I had this, but it was actually Toth's sequel, England as You Like It, which I got at a previous sale and which I almost read a week or two ago, but decided on another book. Now I'm glad I didn't start it, so I can start from the beginning. And, oh, heavens, there's a sequel to the second one...

Yet Another Book Sale

Every year my mantra is "I'm only going to buy the books on my list," and every year I break the rules.


Well, granted, some of the books on my list are very recent and perhaps I shouldn't expect to find them at the book sale. They're about to come out in paperback, or they just have come out in paperback, so I have found books like that at the sale before. But, alas, not today. I found only Craig Johnson books I didn't need, no Victoria Thompson in the Gaslight series (although I did find the second book in her new series), alas no Gladys Taber, no Jodi Taylor books, nor The Silver Gun, etc. But I still managed to come home with A Stack fifteen inches high.

• Jesus and His Times, a "Reader's Digest" book that seemed appropriate for Lent or the approaching Easter season
• Firehorse, about a teen girl who moves to Boston right before the great fire
• Hattie Ever After, the sequel to Hattie Big Sky
• Anything for a Laugh, another Bennett Cerf collection
• Here's England, a tour book of England from 1950 by a husband and wife team
• My Sherlock Holmes: Untold Stories of the Great Detective, pastiches
• City of Secrets, a sequel to Victoria Thompson's City of Lies
• A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer, which will go into my Christmas reading pile
• America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, which seems perfect reading for March
• Good-bye, Mr. Chips and Other Stories (I had no idea James Hilton had done other Chips stories! This collects all of them, and is illustrated to boot)
• Victoria's Daughters, which I've wanted for ages
• a hardback edition of The Wind in the Willows with no cover but Tasha Tudor illustrations

I'd taken time out to go to the rest room and then look at dismay out the open cargo doors of the civic center; it was pouring as if heaven were emptying out and a whole family, mom and three kids, including a very sopped baby, were drying off in the bathroom. So I went back and looked at the kids' books again—there were still lots of picture books and elementary grade reference books left, but the middle-grade books were practically stripped—and then the young adult and trade paper books, and there in the middle of the YA amongst the vampires and supernatural and steampunk were two books by Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. There are currently two biographies about Fermor in the travel section at Barnes & Noble; in 1933 he left home at eighteen and walked from Rotterdam to Istanbul. The books, which chronicle his journey, are supposed to be classics. Well, I'm game. If he can write like Laurie Lee, that will be a definite plus!

I also bought something for Alice and Ken, and a curiosity for Rodney.

I finally got done at the civic center at quarter to noon; it was still raining, but lightly, so I stacked the two bags of books one on top of the other and got them out to the car without getting them wet. It took me a while, but I got down to Tin Drum despite lunch-hour traffic, picked up lunch for both James and I, and got home without incident.
 

"You'll Come a Book-saling, Matilda, With Me..."

Yeah, it's that time of year again. Showed up at 8:45 to join the line, behind a white-haired woman and a family group: grandma, son and daughter (one of them the in-law), and a cute three-year-old boy. Chatted with them until the doors opened.

(When I was in the children's book area, I was delighted to see one little boy so absolutely excited about the books. He looked about six or seven, but he could rattle off all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books he had read and the ones they needed!)

Now, I'd put my foot down with myself last night. No books I don't need. No oversize books.

Which I guess might have been all right had the Book Gods not thrown this big beautiful coffee table book about Colonial Williamsburg in front of me. After that, I was gone.

I was specifically looking for some things today, like copies of books in my series that I can't afford in hardback and that usually come out in trade paperback. I really wanted to find a copy of the new Molly Murphy mystery at the sale, since neither Amazon or Barnes & Noble has it discounted in paperback (probably quarreling with the publisher). I can get it from either Hamilton Books or Amazon Marketplace much cheaper (in hardback), but what a coup if I could find it for $1.50.

No such luck. Nor with the newest Tasha Alexander, although all the previous books were there, if I keep reading them after the newest in paperback, which is not taking my fancy at all, even if she put in a reference to Amelia Peabody. Or Mercedes Lackey's A Study in Sable. I did find the newest Victoria Thompson book, Murder in Morningside Heights, however, brand new, and can cross that off my "buy when it comes in paperback" list.

The rest of the loot:

 Colonial Williamsburg, Philip Kopper with photography by Langdon Clay (this book is so big I can barely heft it; and it's not just a picture book, either, but has substantial text)

 At Home: The American Family 1750-1870, Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett (another huge one with color illustrations)

 After the Revolution: The Smithsonian History of Everyday Life in the Eighteenth Century, Barbara Clark Smith (follows four families including an African-American one)

 The First Year of Reminisce (yeah, before "Reader's Digest" got ahold of it and turned it into all white space and ads)

 The Years of the Forest, Helen Hoover (modern homesteaders in Minnesota)

 Janie's Freedom, Callie Smith Grant (a "sisters at heart" book about an African-American girl after the end of slavery)

 The Summer Before the War, Helen Simonson (that's WWI; it's fiction)

 Writings from the New Yorker, 1925-1976, E.B. White (been hoping to find this at the book sale, because it's overpriced for just excerpts of White's essays)

 Spring Harvest, Gladys Taber (this is one of her fiction books; not sure I'll like it because it's chick lit, which is not usually my thing, but wanted to try one—I always wish for more Stillmeadow, but I have all she wrote)

And a few things for the Christmas collection:

 Once Upon a Christmas, a collection of short stories by Pearl S. Buck

 Deck the Halls: Treasures of Christmas Past, Robert M. Merck (a collection of vintage 19th-early 20th century ornaments like Dresdens and kugels and cotton batting figures, and figural lights)

 Keeping Christmas: The Celebration of an American Holiday, edited by Philip Reed Rulon (collection of Christmas stories)

 The Book of Festival Holidays, Marguerite Ickis (which covers the whole year, from the 1960s)

I also seem to have bought a Happy Hollisters book that I already had, but I didn't have my list with me, and this one does, miracle of miracles, have a cover.

Plus I bought a book I hope to give as a gift, to turn someone into a raging fan like I am. ☺

Incidentally, the next sale is not only not on Columbus Day week as always, but will not be at Jim Miller Park. Instead it will be at the remodeled Civic Center. We haven't been there for years. Still miss the computer sales, although the last couple of years of them it was mostly junk.

[Went back 3/11: got Sue Townsend's last Adrian Mole book, a book for James about World War II aviators called Dauntless Helldivers, a book I was pretty sure I already had but was afraid I didn't (I did, it goes into the box for McKay's), the first book in the "Tuckers" series because the copy I had was scribbled all over by the previous owner, and a book I found just as I was leaving, A Small Country Living, about a transplanted Australian living in London who buys a smallholding in Wales. I started it at lunch because I had nothing else to read, and have been enthralled all day.]

Browse Among the Books

Book Sale, Take 2 (and final)

 A Newbery Hallowe'en (has a Madeleine L'Engle story in it I've never read)

 The Land of the English People (this is a juvenile published after World War II)

 My Pride and Joy by George Adamson (brand new, too!)

 Christmas on the American Frontier, 1800-1900 (apparently the library is getting rid of all their copies)

 The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester

 Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint (another bad cover, but I used to love the Danny Dunn books)

Plus two older books for James that I thought he'd get a kick out of: one about the "modern sport" of model rocketry and another about rocket science that looks like its from the 1950s.

Notes from This Year's Fall Book Sale

$20 and a bunch of goodies.

 A Treasury of American Heritage (articles from the magazine)

 In Search of Centennial: A Journal With James A. Michener (about the making of the television miniseries)

 America's Historylands: Landmarks of Liberty (collection of "National Geographic" articles)

 Christmas Ornament Legends (a little book about the significance of figural Christmas ornaments—the pickle, grapes, rabbits, etc.)

 The Stories of English, a nice big fat linguistics book by David Crystal)

 The Story of Santa Klaus (a facsimile of a 1909 book)

 Houseboat Girl (a Lois Lenski book I don't have! Dreadful cover, but the inside is intact)

 The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery at Missile Town and ...at Mystery Mountain

And because I always come home with one goofy sort of book,

 Night and Day (a collection of articles from a British magazine printed in 1937, rather "New Yorker" like—the column fonts even look familiar—and supposedly it went out of business after being sued by Shirley Temple ??? !!!)

Also bought two books for James I hope he doesn't have and two books to tuck in with Juanita's retirement gift. I also bought one I already had, but I can try to find it a good home, and if not, it only cost me a dollar and I will put it in the box to take to McKay's later this year.