This past weekend I made a trip to the state fairgrounds with a couple of great friends. The Friends of the Library Book Sale was going on in the Expo Hall and let me tell you, this was an experience! The big room in the Expo Hall was wall to wall people and Oklahomans are SERIOUS about their books! I brought in one of my reusable grocery totes to carry my books in and I thought I was thinking ahead of the game. But, there were people with luggage, rolling carts, milk carts, wagons, etc. I couldn't believe it! Everything was very haphazardly sorted. They had balloons tied to each looooong table and the color denoted the genre: fiction, biography, nonfiction, religious, romance, cooking, art, history, mystery, etc. Nothing was alphabetized by any stretch. Basically, there was no way for you to be able to sort through and find anything specific. When I buzzed through fiction, I don't think I've ever seen so much Danielle Steele in my life. Wow.
The purpose of this book sale is for the Metropolitan Library System to sell superfluous copies of books onhand, typically relatively newly published works. There was also verrrry old copies of some books. My friend, Brooke, got a couple of "oldie but goodie" copies of Egyptian history and ballet/dance books. There was a lot of good stuff, but you just had to elbow your way through the people and piles. Oh yea...and hand sanitize. Brooke and I sanitized many times. With that many people and that many public books...who knows what you could come down with. I kind of digressed there...but anyway, after this sale the library system can afford to buy new books to stock their shelves with. Great deal for all!
After $13.50 the above picture is what my "to-read" pile looks like. I would say that probably three-quarters of that pile is new stuff from the sale. And you'll notice they're almost all hardback ($23-$30 new) books. What an awesome deal! In the "big" room hard-back books were $1 and paper back 50 cents. In the "collector's edition" room books varied a little bit higher, but I didn't find anything above $1.50. I will go to this room first next year because the books were in better condition and not much more expensive...plus, a lot more elbow room. For some reason fewer people frequented those tables...
We also asked some of the volunteers about the sale while we were there. If you sign up for two (three hour) shifts you can go in the night before the sale starts and buy your own books before the public sees anything. I'm so up for that! In fact, I emailed the address the fairgrounds provides for this program today.
This was a lot of fun and I will definitely participate again next time around!
I'm not sure I'm up for all that...too many people in too small of a space.
ReplyDeleteYou got some great books!! I see you got the Wedding, Love that book!
ReplyDeleteWe went too! They have some of the weirdest children's books. I purchased one because it was worth the 50 cents to take home to show Nathan. It was called, "Mama, What's drunk?" We also got a children's book about N'Sync. Awesomeness.
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