volunteering
I worked the PTA used book sale today. Miraculously, I managed not to come home with an equal or greater amount of books than the ones I donated to the sale. I even found new homes for some of the books that I had donated, notably T. Berry Brazleton’s Touchpoints, a great book that I raved about to a woman who was about to become grandmother for the first time. I think my review, plus the fact that it was going for fifty cents, really did the trick.
I’m always interested to see the kinds of books that get donated for charity book sales. The Library Lady had a great post recently about the kinds of mistakes people make in donating books at her workplace–a post that was totally born out by my experience today. Does anyone really want a copy of AOL 7.0 for Dummies? Just how dumm must one be, to need an instruction manual for a version of AOL released in 2001?
I was filled with mixed feelings about the makeup of the book donations. I tend not to donate favorite books myself, but I’m still often surprised by the number of mystery and romance novels that grace these tables. I can’t decide if all of my neighbors are really big James Patterson fans, or if they’re just ridding themselves of their beach reading. But I guess the thing that makes a bestseller a bestseller is that it sells a lot of copies–I’m not really sure why I’m always surprised to see so many of them at these kinds of things. I thought about grabbing a bunch of stuff to take home and list on bookmooch, but in the end, I restrained myself. God knows, our house doesn’t need any more books, especially ones no one will ever read.
By the end of the sale, when we were just encouraging people to fill a bag for a dollar, I did convince a lovely threesome of elementary-to-tween sisters to take home Phillip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife, which none of them had ever read. I’m a huge Pullman fan, and was delighted to be able to introduce some new readers to his book, without having to actually give up my own.
My dream for retirement is to someday run a nice little used bookstore, full of cats and funky editions of Kurt Vonnegut novels. I’m always bummed out that there isn’t one in my town. With what’s been happening to independent bookstores lately, I’m not entirely sure that my dream will ever come to fruition (unless I hit the lottery first). Still, it’s nice to get in some practice.
