Total number of bags of books taken to church book sale: 2
Total number of books picked up tonight at sale (the benefits of volunteering to help sort!): 13
So okay, I was supposed to relieve my gasping shelves and tottering TBR pile and not buy any books at all. But one of the thirteen is a gift for Emily, and one is a gift for James, and one is The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist so I have a copy to lend to interested parties and I don't risk losing my own, and one is Bel Canto which I've been wanting to read FOREVER, and one is Prep ditto, and one is The Year of Magical Thinking ditto ditto, and then there were Pale Fire and The Moonstone which I know I am going to read someday, and two are the second two books in the Temeraire trilogy which have been recommended to me for years and are described as Anne-McCaffrey-meets-Patrick-O'Brian and the lone word for that is AWESOME, and they were all much cheaper than if I'd bought them for new, and --
Enough apologizing. I was purely happy leaving the church, the double happiness of the satisfied buyer and the anticipatory reader, and happiness never needs excusing. New books! Hurrah!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Confessions of a Justified Book Buyer
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Enjoy the Moonstone! I think I like the Woman in White slightly better, but there is something pleasing about Wilkie Collins. He was an influence on Dorothy Sayers, who was concerned with how plot and character drive each other, which makes me think of The Fiction Editor. So, nice haul!
ReplyDeleteYour church has a lot of well-read people :)
ReplyDeleteHow lucky! I love the back room at the library. It's like Christmas when you find something good.
ReplyDeleteI go crazy buying books at thrift shops. A quarter for paperback and a dollar for hardcover!
ReplyDeleteCheryl, I'll see you Tuesday T First Pages. Can't wait!
Colleen
'at' not T but I do like me some iced tea.
ReplyDeleteColleen
How can you go wrong. Good books, at a good price, for a good cause. I was in heaven recently at a Boy Scout garage sale when I got to the book section. I can't believe some of the great "finds" I found!
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't mind, but I tagged you. If you have time, I'm sure we'd all find it interesting. If you don't have time...sorry.
gail
The instructions are on my blog.
http://gailmakiwilson.blogspot.com/
You should read Pale Fire sooner, not later. You will love it!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I left you the Nabokov quote you asked for on the May 1 post on Szymborska.
Cheers!
Kittypye (I seem to have made a typo in my password when I registered, so I back to being Anonymous)
It's like deja vu all over again! I've done this so many times myself that now I just give my books to somebody else to take to the sale. My shelves are brimming.
ReplyDeleteBel Canto is wonderful! Hope you enjoy it.
I second what Kittypye says! Pale Fire is truly wonderful in many, many ways that I can't possibly enumerate in a short blog response...
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd certainly be curious to know what you think of it, since I know you & I tend to read for different things.
Happiness needs no excusing..HOW true! Happy Reading!
ReplyDeletewe brought over a couple of bags of books and i got a look at some of the treasures. man, there was some good stuff! i was hoping to sneak away from moving for some purchases, but no luck.
ReplyDeleteSo, you brought home eleven more books than you already had at home, because you donated two, right? Way to GO! Books and art. Can't have too many of either.
ReplyDeleteHi Cheryl,
ReplyDeleteI thought you & your readers might be interested in seeing a partial list of treasures I found at the Book Sale. My favorite items are always those old quirky books one has never heard of, especially on cooking and gardening.
1) Garden Stories (1933 gardening book for children)
2) Cartoon Guide of New York City. 1938
3) Southern Living: The Meats Cookbook. 1971 (includes recipes for raccoon, squirrel & rattlesnake)
4) Soyer’s Cookery Book. Reprinted 1959
5) A Cookbook for Booksellers (New York Times) 1959
6) The Pocket Book of O. Henry Stories. 1956
7) My Life in France. (Julia Child) Hardcover first ed.
8) Middlesex. Hardcover first ed.
9) The Berlin Wall. (Frederick Taylor). May 2007
10) The Motorcycle Diaries
11) Wild Ginger. (Anchee Minn)
12) Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.
13) The Kite Runner
14) several Ruth Rendell paperbacks
15) Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story (audiotape)
16) Visions: New York City (WLIW documentary) DVD
17) Royal Wedding. DVD
18) Il Postino. VHS
Long live the church book sale!