We hit a couple of garage sales this weekend, in a stunning turn of events. We tried to hit a big church rummage sale, but it was in the paper a week early, so we had to settle for a string of smaller affairs. As I’m learning, the number of books available at these yard sales is growing slimmer and slimmer. Heck, even the estate sales offer fewer pickings, which probably indicates how few readers are left. Soon, we readers will actually have to fight and steal from each other to get secondhand books until one of us has all of them. And you know whom I am betting on.
At any rate, I got:
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I got:
- A three volume biography of George Washington because I didn’t have one.
- A copy of Mutiny on the Bounty in case I don’t already have one.
- Two taste-free comedies, Deuce Bigelow and BASEketball, because they were only fifty cents each for the VHS cassettes and I hadn’t seen them since they were in the theaters.
- A couple of cassettes because they were cheap.
As I said, slim pickings. But I like to think of this as resting up for the Carondolet Y book fair this year, which will not be at the Carondolet Y.
Whew! I’m not the only one I know with a copy of Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo on VHS.
And, ah, can I borrow BASEketball sometime? I’m a big enough fan of Parker and Stone to put myself through seeing it. I mean, hey, even they joked about how bad it was in the “Passion of the Jew” episode. But I’m a sucker for completeness.
Maybe one reason the pickings are slim is because folks like me — with tons and tons of books to unload — just don’t have the time to hold a garage sale. I’m sorely tempted to set a table in front of my house and load it with the hundreds of books I don’t plan to keep, then put out a big sign that says “Books: Free. Table: $25.”
Get rid of books? What is wrong with you?