In the last week I’ve acquired more than 450 books. They’re all stacked in piles in my conservatory; separated into fiction/non fiction and further sorted into adult/children; true crime, fiction; sport, biography/autobiography etc. At a rough estimate this lot would cost more than £3,000 new.
They’re not going to be added to my TBR however. In fact I sincerely hope their time with me will be short lived.
In case you think I’ve flipped due to an over-indulgence of chocolate this weekend, I should explain that this mountain of books is all destined for a book sale I’m organising in April in aid of the community library we’ll be opening in my village in June. It’s our first fund raising event and we thought what could be more appropriate for a library than to bring people together who love books. Donations have been coming in all week – I know there are more to come – so all we need now is for a few people to come and buy.
It’s been rather fascinating to see what kind of books my neighbours gathered together as their contributions. I was expecting to get multiple copies of crime fiction from the likes of James Patterson and Jo Nesbo but we’ve not had one even. What I didn’t expect was to find some of my neighbours are fascinated by true crime – I think we’ve had books on everyone from the Moors murderers (my UK readers will be very familiar with that notorious couple) to the reformed drug dealer Howard Marks and the organized gangs who stir up trouble in football matches. I never realised that the quiet little man who I see in the newsagent every Sunday was so much into this kind of world. Nor the chap who sits in the pub doing his crossword over a pint, is such a world traveller – his donation was full of travel guides on places like Vietnam, Sweden, Russia. Thailand as well as long distance cycle paths.
No-one has been brave enough to hand over copies of 50 Shades of Grey yet though. I know they’re out there because they keep turning up in the charity shops. In fact one of those had so many copies they built a fort from them and appealed to people not to give them any more!
I really hope all our books get sold otherwise I might need to start getting creative myself.
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