Garage Sale

We just finished a garage sale at my house. And I would have collected all kinds of hilarious anecdotes from the sale, but I felt like I was trying to get rid of stuff, and it just seemed wrong to have to put a bunch of not-ready-for-the-blog anecdotes into storage in the garage right after clearing it out, so I have less anecdotes, not more, and they're old ones that you've heard already.

I will, however, share one observation from this garage sale, feeling it is plenty suitable for a Library blog.

This. People still really like books. No matter how much I love books, my own extreme familiarity with plenitudes of readily and freely available books and with their care and organization has given me an odd relation to them. I think they are wondrous and intensely necessary things, magic, dear, comforting, and all that, but I also kind of think of them as bulk junk, ubiquitous, underfoot, and relentlessly multiplying often to my disadvantage. So when we have a table at our garage sale with old frayed and stained books I assumed there would be a fairly light interest in them. But no! Displayed horribly in unstable piles on a knee-height upside down plastic tub the books were of great interest to the majority of people who visited our sale, and we sold very many of these books. Not once did anyone say "I'll just read this on my Kindle." or "I can probably find a nicer copy in a Little Free Library somewhere, or in a dumpster behind a bookstore." Nope, they more said "Missing the fourth chapter you say? Eh. I always wanted to read this so I'll just work around it." Very strange to me, but understandable as well. 

I had to get those books somehow.