Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Oh January.  Here you are again and all I want to do is curl up in a sunpatch with the cat and re-read Dorothy L. Sayers novels.  Or travel far, far away, not just in books.  But I have work to do here and lots of it.  When you are self-employed, you see, you are always at work.  We even work for fun, around here.  The friends-of-the-library sale this weekend was a good example - a few towns away, a sunny Saturday morning and the first day above freezing in a week - we drove over and stayed for a few hours.  Then came home with two cartons of books and $70 less in the checking account.  This particular library sale isn't known for great deals, because the volunteers assiduously check the current selling price of each book, online, before pricing it and putting it out in the sale room.  And the best books never even make it there, of course.  Instead they are offered online or privately to dealers other than myself.  Which is fine, it's all for a great cause, that of literacy.  Besides, there is always enough interesting stuff to keep me coming back every few months to see what has been put out for sale.  Although sometimes I admit that I feel a twinge of irritation at picking up a book and seeing a price of five or ten dollars, which I might pay if I saw said book in a used book shop somewhere, but don't necessarily expect to see on a book at a rural library sale in the dead of winter.  But that is the exception, usually the books here are a dollar or two and I manage to find some inventory for my book booth and something new to read. 

Speaking of which, this time around I did pass on a two-volume set of Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets priced at ten dollars.  Here was my thought process while the set was in hand:  Well now, a miniature edition, print very tiny, I might get a headache trying to read it, should hold out for a better set, ugh ten bucks, back on the shelf with you, I do love you so but goodbye little books...  But then I was rewarded with All of Us: The Collected Poems of Raymond Carver and Eric Partridge's massive Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English for a dollar each.  No art books to speak of, though I did pass over one I really wanted, a copy of Frank O'Hara's book about painter Robert Motherwell, because of a giant mold bloom along its bottom edge.  Ryan found two Maine archaeological reports (he's been volunteering on local archaeology digs this year and is in the throes of this obsession).  I ended up with a few keepers myself, my favorite being one of The County Books - Suffolk by William Addison (Hale 1950, first edition in decent dust jacket).  Of this series, the Observer said, "...not guide books of the merely topographical sort but, rather, talkative companions, engagingly informative about the life of the county, past and present."  More about East Anglia, after reading Ronald Blythe, I'll take it.  (And, I'd like the whole series, please.) 

All in all, an enjoyable outing, and a business trip to boot.  But, it is still January and I am still a little stir crazy.  Back to that sunny window.  Perhaps Dorothy L. Sayers can solve a case of cabin fever.