Went to a book sale earlier this week — not that I need any more books at all. I’ve been going through my own stashes for months now, weeding out the ones I can bear to part with. So in fact some of the books at this sale may have been mine to start with. In any case, I didn’t go on the weekend when the masses were there, but drifted in on the Monday half price day to see what was left over and whether there were any titles destined for me.
Much to my surprise I came away with a volume of short stories and two of other short pieces that tend more toward essays than stories. To my surprise because I very rarely read short stories. There’s something about them that just never has appealed to me all that much. I do like essays and short opinion pieces (and write them myself) but I rarely buy book-length collections of such things. Very few authors wear that well in longer doses.
But the most fun thing about the booksale was looking at the things that were left and will undoubtedly be recycled into some other booksale somewhere — I’m sure I’ve been seeing some of these titles for years. There were the usual stacks of hardcovers of relatively recent popular titles — no surprise there. Over in the more miscellaneous categories I easily passed on most of the crafts and cooking books, but there was one that definitely wouldn’t have been in a booksalea few year’s ago — I can’t imagine anyone even writing a volume called “Baby’s First Tattoo” a few years back. I didn’t think that the “Art of Kissing” should have been categorized as crafts — but maybe it was the more how-to section. Not needing any instruction on that subject, I left it there.
Not far away was a copy of “Clutter’s Last Stand” which I did contemplate for a moment. Not for me, you understand, but I do have friends who suffer from clutter creep. But then I decided they really needed the last title — “In Search of Mind” — so I bought that one to go with my essays and checked out.
