Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

We woke up early this morning to bright sun and lots of snowplows pushing around the white stuff, so we ventured one town over to a winter madness library booksale. Ryan and I were two of the five people waiting when the sale opened at nine. Hardcovers were two dollars each, which seemed expensive, but then I realized that all softcovers were four dollars a bag and children's books were twenty-five cents each. So, the scoop: spent around a hundred bucks for five cartons and tote bags of books. Not bad. No extraordinary books, just good general stock. The librarian, like many others around here, has started selling "better" books online herself, rather than stick everything into the book sale. Sigh. Gone are the days when I could find a pristine first edition in jacket of Death of a Salesman for a dollar at a library sale (resold for a heck of a lot more than that)? Maybe. This of course makes me sad, but I understand that libraries need money for books themselves, so it's a good cause. But, so is the cause of me and The Little Bookshop That Could. Someday soon I'll write here about the amazing books I've found at library sales - I don't know if those finds were just dumb luck (right place at the right time) or the payoff for educating myself about first editions and scarce books. Probably both. Anyway, for now, I'm off to clean and sort and price and shelve the, you know, books. I think I can, I think I can...

A note for Dan - at the sale this morning I found another Angela Thirkell hardcover, The Brandons. (Knopf first edition, 1939, no jacket). I haven't started reading her yet, but now it's official, I'm stockpiling.