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Books, Books and more Books

Here it is, the long anticipated post-mortem on the Phoenix Booksale!

 On Saturday morning, Handsome & I showed up at the Phoenix Fairgrounds before sunrise and got in line.  We were no-where near the front of the line.  Seriously?  There were probably two or three thousand people in front of us.  But the sky was pretty!  I still can’t believe what a good sport Handsome is; he puts up with a lot from me and still keeps a smile on his face.  Sigh, he’s dreamy.

Alright, back to the Booksale…I couldn’t believe how long the lines were at quarter to seven in the morning.  This line was probably three hundred feet long with four switchbacks… that’s 300 x 4 feet of line, with people stacked three or four deep. 

But, it wasn’t too cold, and there was a LOT of opportunity for people watching, and we were only in line for an hour and a half before we mananged to make it into the booksale.  And the booksale was gorgeous!  The tables and tables of books were absolutely intoxicating.  The piles of biographies, the stacks of leather-bound classics, the mountains of paperbacks.  The smell of paper made me giddy, but only for a moment.  After all, I was a woman with a mision!  Must find Ayn Rand trilogy!  Must find Moby Dick in hardback!  Must find Nabokov!  Must hurry!!

You can imagine my panic; this is perhaps 1/8th of the book-stuffed warehouse.  I had a lot of ground to cover!  I had to fight myself a little bit, because part of me just wanted to stand in the middle of the chaos and soak it all in.  The people, the books, the air of excitement.  After about 3 nanoseconds, the practical side of me took over and I headed to the biography section to scoop up anything that looked interesting.

Found: Ayn Rand.  Found: Moby Dick.  Found: Ancient soft leather-bound volume by Hemingway that is GORGEOUS!  Found: Autobiography of Ben Franklin covered in the most gorgeous red leather with gilt lettering. Found: A full-of-smiles heidikins who had considerably less sleep than normal but all was forgiven at the sight of Melville, Faulkner, Dostoevsky and Khalil Gibran.

The Loot.  I didn’t bring home nearly as many books as I thought I would; but there is only so much one girl can carry around in her arms whilst trying to snag “The Pursuit of Happyness” in the $1.00 bin and fight hippies for “The Prophet”.  However, my grand total for everything pictured above was a whopping $35.50.  That’s correct.  Thirty-five bucks for tweny seven books, most of them hardbacks and in excellent condition. 

 I already have a February Phoenix trip on my calendar for next year, second weekend of February, doors open Saturday morning at 8:00 am.  Are you gonna be there?

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