Friday, May 31, 2013

Fourteen Dollars

Does your public library hold used book sales?  Ours has about four a year.  Today, the kids and I spent about half an hour there.  This is what we bought:


The total cost?  Fourteen dollars.  For basically the price of one new book, we got all these.  A couple are like new, donated to the library by nice people like us.  Most are "retired" library books with some wear and tear.  But still!  Lots and lots of books for the kids and for me, and we supported our library at the same time.

This is how I manage to fill my house with books and still feed my kids nutritious and healthy food :-)

11 comments:

  1. Ah, love the days when you can get lots of book for little money! I don't always make it the mission, but get quite a few books free through blog tours, or swapped for via PaperBackSwap. :)

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    1. I have a friend who did PaperBackSwap a lot for a while, but I've never gotten into it. Maybe after I hold my yard sale next month, I'll see about swapping any books I don't sell.

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    2. I love Paperbackswap! I've gotten a ton of books through there after trading some that I read but didn't really want to keep. It's a great way to explore things you might not have found otherwise, too.

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  2. Woo-hoo! That's a real bargain right there, Hamlette. Great haul. :)

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    1. I know! And I only hit the children's and classics tables because I had all 3 kid with me and they were restless.

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  3. I love library sales! My library has been having one for at least two weeks now. Every time I go in, I have to browse "just to see if they added anything new". ;) I did find a hardback copy of Persuasion for 50 cents last week. I was so pleased! And so should you be! Great sales plus lots of books is happiness indeed! :D

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    1. Oh, wow! Definitely a good find. I was most pleased by finding a hardcover Peter and the Starcatchers in perfect condition, and an apparently never-opened paperback of Jane Austen's juvenilia.

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  4. I noticed there is a copy of "Hamlet" in the stack!

    My daughter works at our local library, and she often comes home with books they are retiring...usually cookbooks, as cooking is her passion. But just last week, she came home with a positively gorgeous vintage copy of "Little Women." It was in perfect condition...no library marks on it, so it had obviously been donated. For whatever reason, the library didn't want it, so it was given to her.

    My adage is "you can never have too many books." My husband disagrees with that, though, as we have moved several times, and oftentimes, moving truck costs are determined by weight. You know how book weight can add up.

    Anyhow, happy reading to you!

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    1. Actually, there are two copies of Hamlet there. That puts me up to 14 copies, not counting a Cliffs Notes or my Complete Works of Shakespeare in one volume. They all have different essays and commentaries and notes, you see, and once in a while I pull out one I haven't read and learn all kinds of new stuff :-)

      I envy your daughter's Little Women find, though! Very awesome.

      When we moved a couple years ago, one of the guys who moved us said, "It has been a very long time since I moved this many books." I laughed and said, "I know." But to tell the truth, I have a few hundred. My dad has more than three thousand. Staggering.

      I actually used to say "you can never have too many books," but even in a house with a room devoted to being The Library, we don't have enough room for all of mine, and so I have cut down my collection to only the books I love enough to want to read more than twice, and may want to read at the drop of a hat. Same goes for my movies. I still have a lot, but not quite so many :-)

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  5. Our library book sale is only once a year, but there's an awesome one where my parents live, too, which I always go to. There's a bigger library there, and they always have some really old books, which is awesome! I'm going to write a blog post about this soon, so I won't go into detail.

    My parents have bookcases all over their house, which I envy, but my mom tends to only read books once. She just gets excited about them and doesn't want to let them go. Like you, I only keep books that I'll read many times again or that I haven't gotten to yet.

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    1. I love old books! I have a few, not as many as I'd like. I try not to buy books just cuz they're old, but sometimes they're so beautiful and tempting.

      My dad has about 3,000 books, most of them theological books, but he also has lots of classics and history books he wants to read when he retires in a few years, which my mom is enjoying now. So I've lived all my life with bookshelves crammed into every available space -- they have shelves in every room except the kitchen, and in a hallway. I have shelves in four rooms, and I have no doubt that eventually, they'll be in every room too.

      Looking forward to your upcoming post!

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