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mayhapYesterday (er, I guess it's two days ago now? Bugger) I made my annual pilgrimage to the Brigadoon of used books, the Brandeis used book sale.
They hold this sale every year at the end of July/beginning of August at a mall about an hour away. I understand it benefits someone, although that's certainly not why I go. The attraction lies more with the tables and tables of used books, divvied in a rather whimsical manner into such categories as "Literature and Poetry," "Mystery," "Romance," "Children's," "Travel," "Theater," et cetera, et cetera, plus the "Fiction" section which contains all of the above and more for ultimate browsing convenience.
Half price day (Thursday), which I also attended, is glorious enough, and I ended up grabbing an entire brown paper sack full of books that I couldn't resist for a total of less than $20. It is the final day of the sale, however, that is really something to write home about. (That is, when you have no life, like me.) On this final day, they'll sell you a flour sack for $3 or a cardboard box for $5 and turn you loose to grab anything in sight.
You can grab a book because you read it and you liked it, or you heard of it and you thought you might like it, or because you really ought to have read it, or because you think it might be an attractive addition to your bookshelves. Because it has pretty pictures. Because it has a hermaphrodite for a protagonist. Because you understand that it is responsible for every tenth person you meet being named Megan, damn them all. Because anything.
But you have to dart around madly, otherwise someone else will likely grab it before you, if there's anything about it worth grabbing. But not too madly, otherwise you will overlook all sorts of fascinating things and have to make a second trip through or something. And of course, every book you toss into your box (I always go with the box) weights you down that much more, even with my clever maneuver of kicking the box alongside me as I prowl.
Every few minutes the same recording urges you, in a sort of parody of enthusiasm, to purchase mall gift certificates, which are apparently "just what they want." If that is indeed the case, "they" are perverse and masochistic, as apart from the book sale, which is of course a temporary affair, the mall seems to be almost entirely devoid of merchants. There is a store that sells very cheap gifty affairs, and a comedy club, and there was a Mr. Bulky's but I believe that is gone now. There is a Sears, too, I believe. Someone claimed they'd been playing the exact same recording for ten years.
I filled my box up to the brim in about two hours, and was happy. In the same time my friend Stan managed to fill up three boxes, thus demonstrating that he is, amazingly, thrice the bookslut that I am. Well, a lot of the books he acquired were ones I already had copies of from other Brandeis book sale purchases, sometimes even the same editions and all, so it's not exactly a three to one equivalency, but still.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited and translated by James Winny
Written for Children by John Townsend, another edition of which I used in my paper about Harry Potter and Coraline
Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod, translated by M.L. West
Dave Barry Turns 40 by (believe me or believe me not) Dave Barry
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
Death of a Fool and Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chargres by Henry Adams
Oh, not to mention Sexual Behavior in the Human Femaleby Alfred Kinsey et al. which my mother probably has some sort of opinion about but it will remain obscure as she did not share with me.
All these books are currently heaped in the hallway (unlike the half-price day books, which are heaped on the couch in the living room instead) as I don't have sufficient shelving. Hopefully I will be able to remedy this situation soon, and then I will go to New York and have to leave all my lovely books behind anyway. So it was last year, and so it will ever be...
At least this year I will take away my catalogue thereof to remember them by. Am such a wannabe librarian.
They hold this sale every year at the end of July/beginning of August at a mall about an hour away. I understand it benefits someone, although that's certainly not why I go. The attraction lies more with the tables and tables of used books, divvied in a rather whimsical manner into such categories as "Literature and Poetry," "Mystery," "Romance," "Children's," "Travel," "Theater," et cetera, et cetera, plus the "Fiction" section which contains all of the above and more for ultimate browsing convenience.
Half price day (Thursday), which I also attended, is glorious enough, and I ended up grabbing an entire brown paper sack full of books that I couldn't resist for a total of less than $20. It is the final day of the sale, however, that is really something to write home about. (That is, when you have no life, like me.) On this final day, they'll sell you a flour sack for $3 or a cardboard box for $5 and turn you loose to grab anything in sight.
You can grab a book because you read it and you liked it, or you heard of it and you thought you might like it, or because you really ought to have read it, or because you think it might be an attractive addition to your bookshelves. Because it has pretty pictures. Because it has a hermaphrodite for a protagonist. Because you understand that it is responsible for every tenth person you meet being named Megan, damn them all. Because anything.
But you have to dart around madly, otherwise someone else will likely grab it before you, if there's anything about it worth grabbing. But not too madly, otherwise you will overlook all sorts of fascinating things and have to make a second trip through or something. And of course, every book you toss into your box (I always go with the box) weights you down that much more, even with my clever maneuver of kicking the box alongside me as I prowl.
Every few minutes the same recording urges you, in a sort of parody of enthusiasm, to purchase mall gift certificates, which are apparently "just what they want." If that is indeed the case, "they" are perverse and masochistic, as apart from the book sale, which is of course a temporary affair, the mall seems to be almost entirely devoid of merchants. There is a store that sells very cheap gifty affairs, and a comedy club, and there was a Mr. Bulky's but I believe that is gone now. There is a Sears, too, I believe. Someone claimed they'd been playing the exact same recording for ten years.
I filled my box up to the brim in about two hours, and was happy. In the same time my friend Stan managed to fill up three boxes, thus demonstrating that he is, amazingly, thrice the bookslut that I am. Well, a lot of the books he acquired were ones I already had copies of from other Brandeis book sale purchases, sometimes even the same editions and all, so it's not exactly a three to one equivalency, but still.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited and translated by James Winny
Written for Children by John Townsend, another edition of which I used in my paper about Harry Potter and Coraline
Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod, translated by M.L. West
Dave Barry Turns 40 by (believe me or believe me not) Dave Barry
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
Death of a Fool and Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chargres by Henry Adams
Oh, not to mention Sexual Behavior in the Human Femaleby Alfred Kinsey et al. which my mother probably has some sort of opinion about but it will remain obscure as she did not share with me.
All these books are currently heaped in the hallway (unlike the half-price day books, which are heaped on the couch in the living room instead) as I don't have sufficient shelving. Hopefully I will be able to remedy this situation soon, and then I will go to New York and have to leave all my lovely books behind anyway. So it was last year, and so it will ever be...
At least this year I will take away my catalogue thereof to remember them by. Am such a wannabe librarian.
