The last time I showed you a picture of our local library it looked like this: (Click to enlarge.)
Today, when I arrived, it looked like this: (Click to enlarge.)
Do you see all these people?
And these?
And these?
They are waiting, waiting for the ropes to be lifted, just so that they can get a crack at this: (Click to enlarge.)
Wonderland.
Yesterday, these people were members of my community, and tomorrow they will be so again, but today they are The Competition. We are members of the same tribe of lovers, but today we are all here for the same reason: the hunt.
"It's a good thing everyone has different tastes," one gentleman reassured me when I voiced this observation. Yeah, right, I thought. This is a town of readers. These people read everything. Everything. They also buy books for each other. There was one woman I swear was shadowing me, but I'm probably paranoid. I laughed as I picked up a book of "exclusive magic secrets," and then put it back down. She snatched it up. She was at my elbow as I delightedly lunged for Murder Ink, a classic. She hovered until I popped it into my tote bag, then moved away, her disappointment palpable.
Or so I thought. It is easy to become fanciful in an environment like this.
This is what the place looked like half an hour in. (Click to enlarge.)
This is an event, a town event. I mean, when was the last time you heard a jazz band at an outdoor used book sale? (Click to enlarge.)
"Has anyone ever been injured at one of these things?" a man asked an attendant, one of the Friends of the Library who was checking the ropes around the perimeter.
"No one's ever reported it to me. And I've been working these things for ten years."
I was in and out in an hour. The sale goes on, though. Barring downpour, which indeed threatens, this sale will be going until 3:00 p.m. Bring a tote bag and some small bills.
I don't care what you buy now that I've got mine.
How fun! Care to share what you picked up? I'm quite jealous and have to live vicariously you know....
Posted by: sognatrice | June 02, 2007 at 01:33 PM
Oh, sure. In no particular order, just pulling them out of the bags however they come, let me list my haul:
Moneyball, by Michael Lewis
Virgin Soil, by Ivan Turgenev
Treasures of Time, by Penelope Lively
Ursula, Under, by Ingrid Hill
Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West
Talking to the Dead, by Helen Dunmore
An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
Fluke, by Christopher Moore
Paradise Postponed, by John Mortimer
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, by Lauren Willig
When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Feminine Gospels, by Carol Ann Duffy
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, by Judith Thurman
The Essential Haiku, edited and with verse translations by Robert Hass
Words To Rhyme With, by Willard R. Espy
and the aforementioned Murder Ink, "perpetrated" by Dilys Winn
I spent one hour and twenty dollars. I think I did all right.
Posted by: Sara | June 02, 2007 at 10:58 PM
Hmm, when I came home yesterday, I plunked my plunder bags onto a chair. I didn't realize until this morning, while looking for my hairbrush, that one of the books had fallen out, and so got left off the above list. That one is:
The Black Sheep by Honoré de Balzac
So. Twenty books for twenty dollars. Really not bad at all.
What's with the jealousy, though? Don't they have used book sales in Italy?
Posted by: Sara | June 03, 2007 at 10:55 AM
This is wonderful; a wonderful event, but also wonderful to see such a turnout. What fun! And how great to live in a town of readers. :-)
You know, I was reading our Parish newsletter, which details missing cats, the over-sixties club and so on and I discovered that this summer, our village hall will play host to an exhibition of "Cycling Erotica". In our village hall. Where the cub scouts meet. Apparently, they did it last year and it was very popular...
Of course, one simply has to attend such things to find out what they're about. But cycling? Erotica? I appear to have moved to a rather curious little village...
Posted by: The Goldfish | June 03, 2007 at 05:46 PM
Ha! Curious indeed! I do hope you will report on the event when it transpires.
(Of course, now all I can think of is that Queen album with the song that goes "I want to ride my bicycle/I want to ride my bike/I want to ride my bicycle/I want to ride it where I like," the album which had the photo of all those naked cyclists as part of the inside cover art.)
Posted by: Sara | June 03, 2007 at 07:53 PM