Friday, April 23, 2010

The Delights of Book Bargains

Yesterday Claire and I took a break to drive up to Blair, Nebraska (about 20 miles from our house) in order to return a couple of books we had on loan from Dana College there. I'm fortunate to possess a library card from Grace University which allows me access to various college libraries around the state -- a very handy means to obtain books unavailable elsewhere. But instead of just sending them up, we decided to spend an hour together and drive them up instead.

What we hadn't figured on was finding a library sale of the kind that we used to so enjoy back in the 70s; that is, books going for 10 cents a paperback, a quarter for hardback. Sure, we've severely culled our library over the last few years and we're pretty circumspect about buying new ones. But, at these prices, who could resist?

Thus we came home with a handful of popular paperback novels (Alistair MacLean, John Dickson Carr, James Hilton) as well as a little volume of Edgar Guest poetry; a 1927 edition of Charles Lindbergh's We; Richard Tregaski's Guadacanal Diary (a book I first read in junior high); Atlantic's Brief Lives: A Biographical Companion to the Arts (1965); an extra copy of Lennart Nilsson's A Child Is Born; and a boxed 2-volume set of Kelly & Harbison's The American Constitution (First edition, 1948).

It was pleasant break in our routine, a lovely day for a country drive...and a nice haul of cheap books!