Saturday, November 12, 2005

A Mellow Book Sale

Since I'm a bookseller I normally attend Friends of the Library book sales on the first day, or the preview day. The Oklahoma Land Rush is nothing compared to booksellers hot on the track of E-bayable books. Running, stomping, pushing, shoving and shin kicking are not uncommon occurrences. The Scan Monsters grab their piles and run to the corners to look for gems and woe betide anyone who gets in their way.

However, the Waco Book Sale begins on a Thursday and since I've got this day job attending their preview sale is difficult to impossible. It's a 3 hour drive.

However, while helping my friend Pie I'd meet a number of her friends, some of whom became mine too. Wallacex lives up in the Waco area and we hit it off instantly. Not only were our Beloveds twins separated at birth, but My Beloved said we were too.

Wallacex encouraged me to come on up on a Saturday and since it meant we could hang out together and do some serious thrifting I decided to make the drive.

Booksales on the 3rd day are much calmer. It wasn't crowded, the only shoppers were readers looking for books to read, not books to sell. I went up and down the aisles without tripping over book trolleys or being run into by unruly children. It was obvious that the sale had been picked over but I still found some gems - mostly books that had been misfiled or books that had been over looked.

Once we finished we headed out to the thrifts. At one particularly grubby thrift I found a lovely stack of horse books illustrated by Sam Savitt. He's collectible so that find made my day.

Add in a couple of good meals and a day of excellent companionship and booktalking - Waco was well worth the trip!

1 comment:

Gel said...

Sounds fun and great find!!