The Conical Glass: Coincidences at the book sale

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Coincidences at the book sale

Yesterday afternoon I was emailing with my friend Neal about author Sherman Alexie, who had just done a reading in Albuquerque. I mentioned that I had been wanting to read his acclaimed novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

A couple hours later, I went to my local Friends of the Library book sale, which is one of the largest in the Bay Area. I happened to be walking past a table when someone picked up a book and showed it to her friend. "Oh, this is a wonderful book," she said. I glanced over, and noticed that the book she was holding was none other than The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The friend took it, glanced at it, and put it down. I reached over and snapped it up.

I walked over to a table filled with hundreds of romance novels displayed spine-up -- I don't read that genre, but the sheer volume was kind of impressive. A fellow browser mentioned that she had just donated 500 historical romances -- "those were my duplicates!" -- and said she was looking for novels by Liz Carlyle. I had never heard of that particular author, but at that very moment, my eye happened to fall on a particular book and I read the name Liz Carlyle. I handed it to her, and sure enough, it was one of the titles she was searching for. (A further perusal of the romance table shows that a good third of the books there seem to be written by Nora Roberts.)

One of the things I like to do at the sale is try to find the book that seems least likely to sell. At this sale, I think I have to declare a tie between The Complete Y2K Home Preparation Guide and 5/5/2000: Ice: The Ultimate Disaster. From a description of the latter book: "The Antarctic ice mass should be three miles thick by May 5, 2000 -- the date when all the planets will be arrayed in a straight line and some kind of cataclysmic shift of ice to the equator is possible..." Perhaps the 2012 Survival Guide will be turning up at the 2017 Friends of the Library sale.

posted by 125records @ 12:15 PM

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