2016 incidents of infamy

There might as well be a confession thread where we bemoan our purchases (while guiltily feeling gleeful at the same time for the great catch).

I'm trying very hard to read faster than I purchase and was doing great this first month, until I broke even with three new ones for the TBR pile. I've never read Slaughterhouse Five so I couldn't let that pass. Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter I managed to dodge at first, until I googled it, then Wikipedia, then ... yup, back to the bookstore. Where I also saw Elric of Melnibone, a sci-fi novel I failed to grasp in high school and thought I should give that another chance.

I need a tracking bracelet fastened around my ankle, I really do.

Lol hey, you saw my comment on the TBR thread, 32 books entered my house last month! ...oops? xD

I'm getting so bad that the last couple of piles of new books didn't even have room on the floor, so a few of them ended up on my bed. I woke up one day last week with an awful pain in my chest from a hardcover book that had been digging between my ribs all night. I might have to do something about this, well, after my next two pre-orders arrive...

>3 macsbrains:, ouch! But at least you had something to read when you woke up, right?

I attended the library book sale in February. Bad, bad, bad idea.

>3 macsbrains: I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one suffering this particular syndrome.

Better dreams that way. Like one of those dreamcatchers but it only filters in the good stuff.

>4 Cecrow: I can't leave a library sale without SOMETHING, even if I know it will be #4,430 on my TBR, which, sadly, is perhaps not quite that long yet, but is still in the quadruple digits.

>5 2wonderY: I actually have a new bed in my shopping cart waiting for some room repairs to be done before purchase, and said bed might include a bookcase headboard and 8 under-bed storage drawers...

Our library sale is next Thursday - Saturday. Sigh. If I leave with less than 25 books it will be a miracle. I go on the first day and pay "full price", usually avoid the second day unless I'm in town (I live 8 miles out of the closest town), and then always make an excuse for $5/bag day, frequently bringing home 2-3 fully stuffed bags.

Those bag days are truly evil. The only good news is that this is usually the last day when it's the most picked-over. It can be the strangest mixed sensation: hoping you're not too badly tempted by too many titles, but knowing you absolutely cannot resist finding out.

The library sale here is everything is €1, no special bag deals or anything like that. If stuff doesn't sell I'm pretty sure they just box it back up for next time. Sadly the one library sale I prefer doesn't seem to be doing it this year. It's always on a certain Sunday in April and this year the site says nothing and there's some debate thing being held that day in the actual library (the sale is in the little garage room behind it). Pff!

I get that feeling about ours too; some of the chaff comes back and back and back again. Nobody is going to buy your 1970s science textbook. Surely someone still uses a wood stove, somewhere?

Hahaha!

I'm on the board of our Friends group of our local library, which holds the book sales. Here's what happens to our unsold books. Children's books go to Book Harvest and local charter schools. We also have a prison charity and some nursing homes come through and take what they want. I take some for our little free library. Everything else is usually sold in a lot on Craigslist or goes to Goodwill. We don't have storage room and always get plenty of donations in the six months between sales.

I find a surprising amount of good quality recent fiction among the unsolds, which I take for my little free library so I can feed my book addiction while telling myself it's not for me. Of course there are always piles of supermarket fiction left over as well. Some of the stuff is honestly no good for anything but recycling but it's surprising what people will buy. Library sales are a good source for really esoteric books.

That's a handy bit of insight. What I'd like my library to explain is why they're discarding so many strong classic titles into the sale that I feel I have to rescue. I know they no longer have anything on their shelves by Katherine Ann Porter, Jorge Borges, others I'm forgetting, etc. because those are in my basement now, and I've checked their online catalogue. It's a bit sad what they're willing to part with, even though I get to keep them as prizes. And in the case of Borges at least I find it hard to believe it's because no one borrowed them, because I'd just borrowed it the summer previous.

Our Friends of the Library Sale takes all left over books, divides them equally by genre into 4 piles, then gives one pile each to the three county PTA Thrift Stores and the local Habitat for Humanity store.

They collect books all year, at the library, in a lovely big store room, and have twice yearly sales. I think they make about $18K each time..... it's quite a big sale. It's also not picked over before 9 a.m. on the opening day by ANYBODY, so the choice is fantastic. (And the dealers show up.... grumble.) They also get some valuable books since we have a large and wealthy retirement community in our county and have a specially-priced collectors section that they publish online before the sale. After the sale, the specially priced books get sold on Ebay or something like that.

I love my local Friends of the Library.