Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

I took the day off on Monday, and got out of town. What was I doing? Visiting other people's bookshops, of course. I get tired of looking at my own books and need to see someone else's. One of my favorite stops is the Big Chicken Barn on Route 1 between Ellsworth and Bucksport. Over 120,000 books. Most I am utterly uninterested in, but I can easily spend a happy two hours seeking out the ones I am interested in. This trip, I came away with two grocery bags of books for under $100. A few things to read, and the rest for my shop. Books by Penelope Lively, T.C. Boyle, Ronald Firbank, John Thorne, Richard Feynman, etc., a biography of Ian Fleming, a book I haven't yet read by "The Author of Elizabeth & Her German Garden" (another favorite of mine, the author's real name was Elizabeth von Arnim - she also wrote The Enchanted April and numerous other books), a thick book on medieval book-making, a small and charming antiquarian book about wildflowers in the Berkshires (1880, $4), and a few things I always like to have in stock, like the Oxford Book of English Verse, for one, which I sold last week. Some days I think that's why I'm in this business - so I can buy. I think I bought 25 books in all. At a good library sale, I might buy 10 cartons of books. Gluttony!