Used Book Sale

Books!!

I used to be an avid book collector.  You know, the actual hold-in-your-hand book, with pages and print and all bound together ... 😀 !!  One of our favorite things to do over the years of our marriage was to go to books stores or used book dealers and leave with arm loads of books.  There is nothing like the smell of a new book or an old book.  I always felt that old books that were 75 years or older were like little old men - a bit wrinkled, maybe yellowed, old man smell, stuff written in it showing it was valued by somebody at some time.  And they had to be handled with care - just like a little old man.

Ahhh ... old books.  I miss those adventures.

When the Kindle and the Audiobook craze was born, I couldn't imagine giving up the 'hold-in-your-hand' book.  Years went by and I watched peers shifting over to digital technology for their reading pleasure.  I shook my head in disbelief and knew in my heart I would never get caught up in that trend.

Ha! Famous last words.

Today I have a Kindle Paper White full of books (many free, some borrowed) and a iPhone with many Audible titles - AND a tiny library of actual books (most reference books) enough to fill maybe  2 boxes.  I could do a whole post on why I enjoy my digital technology even though we were sort of forced into it.  My husband downsized his large library about 6 years ago when reading became too difficult, and I did the same with my books moving into our condo (a move required for my husband's safety.)  It is amazing how his blindness has changed our lives.  I do miss going to book stores - especially used book stores.  Sometimes I stop at Barnes and Noble to look around, but it isn't as much fun without my husband.  I usually leave empty handed.

About two weeks ago, our senior center had a used book sale.  I stood in the doorway peering in wondering should I bother.  Then I was cheerfully invited in to look around by one of the volunteers.  It would have been rude not to enter.  All the paper backs were 3 for a $1.  Wow, a bargain.  So I started to poke around.  No little old man books on the tables but lots recent popular stuff.  I found these three books that just seemed to want a new home.

I haven't read them yet, but I thought I would share the titles and brief descriptions to see if anything catches your fancy like it did mine.

Recipes from the Dump by Abigail Stone - really, how could anyone resist a book with that title.  Here is the book cover synopsis.

Dignity Divinity (recipe)

1 father, deserted

1/4 cup sugar

2 cups flour

2 heaping tablespoons children

1 father, disappeared

1 indulgent or disinterested town

1 woman with a weight problem, shabbily dressed

1 or more public embarrassments

• Put all the ingredients in a bowl, mix well, and savor this hilarious, heartfelt chronicle of life with Gabby Fulbriten.  A single mom raising three kids next to the Leadbelly, Vermont town dump.  Gabby is tirelessly searching - for a man who knows there's more to a relationship than candlelight and clean laundry, for the thin person the Diet Center promises lives inside her, and for the missing ingredient that will bring order to her cluttered existence.  A mock cookbook of our culture, Recipes from the Dump will warm your stomach, fill your soul, and, like an afternoon spent trading laughs and recipes with an old friend, leave you hungering for more. 

The Lobster Chronicles by Linda Greenlaw - a true story of drama in small-town life and a celebration of family and community.  I am a sucker for true stories of people who live very different lives from my own and this one takes place off the coast of Maine - a win-win for me.  The synopsis.

• After seventeen years at sea, Linda Greenlaw decided it was time to take a break from being a swordboat captain.  She felt she needed to return home, to a tiny island seven miles off the Maine coast with a population of seventy year-round residents, thirty of whom are her relatives.   She would pursue a simpler life; move back in with her parents; become a professional lobsterman; and find a man and settle down.  But almost none of this works out as planned, and soon she is forced to reevaluate everything she thought she knew about life, luck and lobsters.

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier - a book made movie and described as an 'American Odyssey.  The synopsis.

• Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, Inman, a Confederate soldier, decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains and to Ada, the woman he loved there years before.  His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign.  At the same time, Ada is trying to revive her father's derelict farm and learn to survive in a world where old certainties have been swept away. 

There is little doubt that these books will not go the distance to make it to 'little old man status.'  And paperbacks seldom last anyway.  But they appear to be interesting and fun stories.  When I am done, I will just pass them on to others.

Happy summer reading, all.