I know I have a serious book addiction.
My friends and family know I have a serious book addiction.
So I don’t know why it should surprise anyone when I behave like a bibliophile out of control. (Is that redundant?)
Just last week I had a huge book sale. I cleared out forty (count them—40!) boxes of books from my home office and bookshelves. (More on the sale later.) I made over $1,000, and I’ve been reveling in all the freed-up floor space in my office and a little bit of shelf space throughout the house.
So what did I do today?
While innocently entering the library for a little quiet study time, I uncontrollably detoured through the Friends of the Library book sale room.
I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that I bought replacements for two books I sold just four days ago—Daniel Boorstin’s two-volume Landmark History of the American People. The ones I sold (for $4.00 each) were ex-library copies in fairly poor condition with badly wrinkled bindings. But the ones in the library sale room were privately owned, and they were in beautiful condition with dust jackets. The jacket copy confirmed that these were indeed Landmark Giants (which I had merely suspected before), and I’m still trying to complete my Landmark collection, so what could I do? (Hey, they were priced at $2.00 and $4.50, so I still came out ahead, right?)
If the story stopped there, it could be laughed off as merely a passing folly.
But the plot thickens.
As I was heading out the door, I spotted a thirty-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Macropedia and Micropedia, copyright 1981), in pristine condition . . . for a paltry $20!!
Gulp.
Now, I ask you—could any bibliophile worthy of the name reasonably be expected to walk off and leave those books sitting there?
Exactly.
It took four trips to haul them all to the car (note to self: bring strong teenage son next time I acquire thirty large, heavy books) . . . and I didn’t even take the seventeen Britannica yearbooks, stored in the library’s garage, that were included in the price. I told the lady I’d have to come back for them another day.
Huffing and puffing after all that book-hauling in the Mississippi June heat, I called Rachel, a dear friend and fellow bookjunkie, to confess.
“But don’t you already have a set of encyclopedias?” she inquired incredulously.
Er, exactly how is that relevant? A confirmed bibliophile should know better than to ask such a preposterous question!
Get this—while choking back gales of laughter, she told me, “Mary Jo, you’re like a wino! You get a little money and you go right back and buy more books!”
A wino?!? I’m outraged!
In my own defense, I quote Erasmus:
“When I get a little money, I buy books;
and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.”
Nuff said.
I’m not sure Rachel is convinced, though, so if I don’t blog for a while, you’ll know the men in white coats have hauled me away for emergency bibliotherapy.
Shuddering at the thought of detoxing from books . . .
Mary Jo Tate
ah hah! you have a weakness!
I had to manually pick my jaw up off the ground when I read you had sold 40 boxes of books!
what do you have in way of bookshelving I”m wondering??? 🙂
what ever you have, you now have room for your new replacements 🙂
I’ll have to send my son Andrew over to read this entry. He’ll totally understand the reason behind the madness;)
Only because I know it will do your heart good, , will I break down and tell you how envious I am that you found the Giant Landmarks. I know I had my chance to buy the other set from you, and was ready to do so till I nobly offered volume 1 to our mutual friend who picked up volume 2 before I did.
At any rate, I’m ready to admit you were smart to buy the encyclopedias. Given enough time, I almost always see the imperative in book purchasing.
I can relate! We recently moved and finding that we had less room to put our books, we sorted out the ones that we decided to do without. While these boxes of books were still on the front porch, waiting for our upcoming garage sale, what should we do but go to our local library’s book sale and haul home more books! 🙂
~Connie
I definitely feel a kinship with you! As any bibliophile knows, books going out only means one now has more room for books coming in. No more double-shelving or stacking books horizontally on free bits of floor space – for a while, at least.
And I’m also guilty of getting rid of a book, only to turn around and buy it again. I’ve done that a lot. Also am guilty of having multiple copies of the same book or sets of books (My Book House, Chronicles of Narnia, Childcraft). My logic is good in that instance (I have seven children and it would be awful if, when they leave the parental nest, they didn’t have their childhood favorites to take along with them), but the logistics aren’t well done – extra copies take up lots of shelf-space.
LOL. I definitely resemble your remarks. I love to collect books. Love to read them, too. Only my reading is far slower than my buying. I also have a dozen boxes of books ready to be donated to the library sale. In the meantime, somehow I manage to keep taking books out of the boxes. This looks like a good read. If you ever find the cure, let me know.
And I’ve done the very same thing — Sold a truckload of books and used the proceeds to buy more books! Also, on the day of my book sales, I’m often swept by a wave of nostalgia, and I’ll grab a book out of a box and think, “Why in the world am I selling THIS ONE?!?” And I’ll slip it into my purse to take back home. I’ve also been known to repurchase titles that I had originally sold. So your story sounds pretty normal to me.
Wow, I thought I had a book addiction, but you beat me hands down!
Love and blessings
Jules x (UK)
Hi, I’m Jessica and I’m a bibliophile. What’s worse, I’m an autodidact, bibliophile, pastor’s wife homeschooling mother. The libraries in my area “know” me, in fact the libraries all over Georgia at least know my “name” cause it comes up all the time on the interlibrary loan system.
We have our own library at LibraryThing with a little over 300 books, which seems very low to me. My whole reason for commenting though other than to make friends is to wonder WHERE WAS I WHEN YOU WERE SELLING YOUR BOOKS?
When we go to town (civilization that is 40 miles from our house), the kids think going to the bookstore is a natural thing. Home –> bank –> Bookstore —> Eat —>Errands. We also shop the used book stores when we can find them and Goodwill is the BEST in finding great books at rock bottom prices.
Come by and visit sometime! I have my library on my blog as well as my reading wishlist…
God Bless!
Jessica
My first thought was-‘no way’. And then, ‘yes way’!
I haven’t actually done that, but I have come soooooo close. I’ve had to literally pull myself away from good sales so I didn’t use up our grocery money! It’s a hard thing to do. I have to limit myself w/the catalogs I look at also. I want EVERYTHING! I don’t even try to frequent book fairs! If it weren’t for the agreement I made w/my husband when we got married, our finances would be doomed! I think he may be worse than me though. I used to go over to his house many times and see ‘new’ books-from Goodwill mostly. “It was only 50 cents”, he’d say! And, “I’ve always wanted to read this”. Now that we’re married I had to find a place to put them! I ran out of shelf space in 5 minutes and had a ton of ‘homeless’ books laying at my feet!
Blessings,
Traci 🙂
Save the room next door for me. What you did sounds perfectly normal to me.