I Love Library Book Sales

And here are a few reasons why:

Books
Yes, this should be obvious. Our little visit to the Muncie Library Book Sale on Saturday was quite fruitful. Both Blake and I found several things to put at bay our apparently incurable desire for books. Here’s what I found:

• A book of Ogden Nash poetry. SO funny. Check out a few of my new favorites here and here and here and here.
  
• Bill Peet: An Autobiography. I’ve never read this one, but I’ve thought about reading it. Peet was an animator in the early days of Disney. He worked on films like Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Sleeping Beauty. His autobiography is written for children and is wonderfully illustrated. It even won a Caldecott Honor award. This copy is a paperback in mint condition – it wasn’t ever even an actual library book (because apparently the Friends of the Muncie Library also like to sell items from random personal collections). So, happy find.
• Another happy find was a true blue Muncie Book. It’s a hilarious memoir called Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. It chronicles their adventures as they tour Europe in the 1920s. Kimbrough was born and raised in Muncie and there is even a historic district named for her (it’s the neighborhood where she grew up). They made a movie of it in 1944 and it is classic…absolutely hysterical! I suggest you all go track a copy down and watch it immediately. So, anyway, now I can add this book to my Ball jars and sit back and admire my growing Muncie Collection.
• A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago by Anne Douglas Sedgewick. Yeah, I’d never heard of it either. But it looks to be quite charming, and I can’t resist charming. It was written in 1918 and is a biography written in autobiography format of the author’s good friend who grew up in Brittany, France.
• An old VHS copy of Duck Soup. If there’s one thing I learned from my favorite cousin, it’s that you shouldn’t ever pass up a Marx Brothers film. And Duck Soup is classic! (Note: This favorite cousin also introduced me to Our Hearts Were Young and Gay…she sure knows how to pick winners!)
• A few CDs: Greig’s Peer Gynt, a sampling of Dvorak, James Galway playing selected Bach sonatas, and a Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas CD.*

Blake also found (quite) a few gems. His, though, are more interesting to him than they are to me, but that’s fine because he’s not making me read them. Although, he did find a nice collection of short stories by well-known authors and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence that do have somewhat of an appeal.

*You would think at times that we were sifting through the stacks at DI. Besides the MoTab CD, there was also a Lamb of God video for sale, as well as an ancient paperback copy of the Book of Mormon.

For Cheap
All of the above for only 50 cents a pound, plus $1 each for the CDs and VHS. Not too shabby, I say.

Running Into People That We Know
While we were there, we ran into a fellow from the ward. He was there with a few of his kids (including, Eve, one of my Activity Days girls…she caught up with me over by the children’s books, just as I discovered a practically mint-conditioned copy of The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare, which I of course pulled off the shelf and recommended that she buy (because it is a fabulous book). I think she bought it). After we left, Blake recounted a very brief conversation he had with this guy. It went a little something like this:

Guy From The Ward: You’ve got to be careful at things like this…or you might end up buying more than you have room for!
Blake: Uh…..yeah.

It should be noted here that we have more books crammed into our tiny one-bedroom apartment than his whole family has in their sprawling Victorian fixer-upper. So, to him I say, “You’re a little late on that nugget of advice.” Seriously, though, it took a bit of creative re-arranging to make room for our new purchases.

Running Into People That We Don’t Know
As we waited to get into the actual sale, we stood in line behind some very interesting folks. Weirdos, you might call ‘em. They honestly looked better suited for a Dungeons and Dragons party. And one of the guys called his girlfriend “Dirt.” He gave a reason (out loud, to any one who would listen), but it was so ridiculous that I’m not even going to share it here. What sorts of books do these people buy? Graphic novels? How-to guides on Cooking With Beer? Whatever it is, they sure spiced up our hour at the library book sale.

So there you have it: a successful morning spent with the Friends of the Muncie Library. Apparently there’s another one in late October. And you’d better believe we’ll be there, crazy people or not.

Other events which highlighted our Saturday and which therefore deserve to be mentioned here:

• We did our charitable duty and cleaned the church first thing in the morning. We were assigned the kitchen. It only took us 20 minutes, so, go us!
• Before heading over to the library, we stopped at the Bread Store to pick up a few items. It turned out that first thing on a Saturday morning is the time to go because, holy cow! It was like a smorgasbord! English muffins, bags of bagels, loaves of French bread, boxes of donuts….all for only 39 cents! We totally cleaned up.
• We also stopped by AutoZone and happily learned that WE WERE RIGHT. Our O2 sensor, though completely replaced not 3 weeks ago, was never actually fixed. Anyway, we’re taking the car back on Wednesday.
• It was confirmed to me yet again that a very bizarre thing that is happening to me as I get older: Buying appliances makes me happier than a toddler with chocolate cake. After putting up with an absolutely worthless vacuum cleaner for over a year, we bought a new one that actually works. Happy day! We went home and argued like kids (or, maybe I should say, not like kids) over who got to vacuum first. Pretty silly, but I guess that’s what a year’s worth of crud on the carpet will do to clean freaks like us. So, anyway, to the native Muncie gal who sold us our new vacuum at the little New and Used Sweeper Shop…your vast knowledge of the finer points of vacuums totally sold me. Oh, and so did your thick Indiana accent.
• A two and a half hour nap on a cloudy Saturday afternoon is a very nice thing. And it keeps us going until 2 in the morning (which fact isn’t necessarily a good thing when you’re aiming for 3.5 hours of visiting teaching the next afternoon. I survived, anyway).