The Book Sale

A small pocket size Greek English Dictionary with a lovely shark skin cover

Our local Library has a book sale twice a year. Once in the Spring and then again in the Fall. All year long books are donated, discarded from the libraries shelves, and then sorted by volunteers into groups, boxed, and stored. I have been a "sorter" for several years now. It is so much fun. I never know what kind of books are going to be there.

We are allowed to take home and read any of the books, then return them for the sale. If we run across something we just have to have we are allowed to purchase it. Each volunteer works a shift or two at the sale. We make almost $100,000.00 dollars to put back into the library each year. When I first started sorting it was only $43,000.00. Quite a difference in just five years. This sale I was strictly a buyer as I can not cart around the boxes of books, nor can I sit for long periods of time on metal folding chairs. This year I bought a variety of foreign language dictionaries, a lovely shorthand book, some really nice music books, some poetry books, a map book from 1926, a few cook books, some classics like The Great Gatsby, a few Jane Austen books, and the list goes on and on. What is it about the look and feel of a really well made book? I thought I would scan a few things and share them with you. Hope you enjoy!

Two pages from a Poet's Handbook and Dictionary. I was intrigued with the way they had all these rhyming words.


A couple of random shorthand pages. No matter how much I look at it, it all seems the same to me.


A lovely Dictionary with colored illustrations. I thought this knight one all dressed in armor was pretty cool.