You may already know we have a lot of books in our small house. We stopped counting at 10,000. At that point my professional organizer friend insisted that for every book that entered the house one must also leave. I used to patronize library sales frequently but two years ago quit cold turkey; I was afraid I was addicted and anyway our homeschooling needs had capped off since we were saturated on most topics. I haven’t been to a library sale since, until today. It is a fun social scene; I saw all sorts of people I know, including some I hadn’t seen in a while. I was there before the doors opened, and we had to line up in order by number to go in. I was number 240 and about in the middle of the line. And that is before it even got started! They said they had over 120,000 books on sale. (See sale info here. Find a book sale near you.)

It is true that I brought home more than I thought I would. It is more of a problem of volume rather than expense since the prices are very good. I brought each of my children a pile and bought two piles of gifts I’ll give this year, since one of the delights of these sales is you can find great stuff in pristine condition and you can afford to be generous! I also bought some antique books (which we enjoy as read-alouds and curiosity reference books), a range of books to keep myself edified and amused, and for the first time bought VHS’s since they were cheaper than renting them would be. It was sad to completely skip the picture book section as it is my favorite, but all my recipients are beyond that unfortunately. I only got a couple cookbooks and art books this time. I was hoping to score in the audio book section, but I bet the libraries got rid of those during the intervening years when I wasn’t attending, which is too bad since my car still can play cassettes. Anyway, check out some of my purchases below (at least the non-gift piles)…