So, today was a memorable day. THe first thing that happened was that I went to the local Historical Society's Book Sale where they sell all of the old and unwanted library books and book donations, the second was that I saw a dog swimming in real life(not on television) and finally Australia, the place where i live had an earthquake. It was one of the weirdest most unusual things i ever felt in my whole life. Because earthquakes are so uncommon here my first thought was "where is the train?", but then i remembered that we don't live near a train and we all ran outside in panic. Like the other typical things such as watering the plants before it rains or buying goods before they become discounted, the earthquake managed to stop the minute our feet hit the gravel.
SO... onto the real purpose of the post. I have never been to one of these ex-library book sales before. I have been to the op shops or charity shops - as some people call them - and bought 2nd hand books before, but I've never been to one of these sales before. Just like how I hadn't been to the library for like 6 months until i did work experience there. I had been buying books for all that time. It was like I completely forgot that it even existed.
I walked in to see tables filled up with some pretty old books. Most of them looked like the kind of mediocre stuff that an old aunty might read. All erotic romance by unimportant authors or murder mysteries that all had a similar looking plot line. And I didn't expect to find anything in good nick because when I did the work experience I knew how old and used the books were when I helped remove the barcoding. So, yeah, basically I went in low expectations and all and found myself three pretty cool books. I won't know if they were gems or not until I actually get around to reading them.
The first book I got was "Sherlock Holmes: the hidden tales" which is a book of short stories written by a series of different authors about Sherlock Holmes. The covering on the dust jacket was a bit dirty looking and there was a cut into the dust jacket, from where the barcode was removed. I already own a book of tales about Sherlock written by the original, A mr Arthur Connan Doyle, but have yet to read it and since I loved the movie so much I figured that it wouldn't hurt.
The second book I got was "A Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marqueez, whom is also the author of the much acclaimed "Love in the time of cholera". I actually don't have much of a clue about the story line, but have heard grand things from Shelfari membersin reguards to the particular book. The from of the book had a square patch missing from where the barcode was removed.
The last book I got was Nick Hornby's "How to be Good". I haven't read anything by this author before, but I have seen "High Fidelity"- the film- because of John Cusack and fallen in love with it for it's quirky witty humorous perfection. I didn't bother to read the rest of that cover either because I was extraordinarily Lazy. This book must have been donated because there were no stamps or cutting lines from the removal of barcodes on or inside the book. The back cover however is half rotted away, due to some form of water damage, however i did not realise this until after purchase.
The Findings:
I actually had a lot of fun finding treasure and whilst the picky critical me can't seem to lay dormant and accept all of the faults in the presentation of the books, I was quite happy to deal with them for the price that i paid. A price of $1.50 total or 50 cents each. The one disappointment was that I didn't realise there was a teenage table there and would have loved to have bought something from there.
Until next time,
Natalie
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