How many books? To find out, keep reading to the end of this post!
This past weekend I spent at the annual Friends of the Guelph Public Library Book Sale. I may have been going to this event every year since it got started. At least I have a bookmark from the first one and talked about last year’s visit here. You can also check out previous visits by following some of these links. This post is part of a series then. Or you could see it as a follow-up to my big Walking Guelph post, since I’ll include some more pics of my hometown here.
The sale actually runs for four days, from Thursday through Sunday. I attended opening day (when there’s a $10 entrance fee) and again on Saturday (no charge). Thursday was a bright sunny day, without a cloud in the sky, at least in the early going. I don’t think it’s ever rained on a book sale! So I walked downtown to the bus station. Along the way I walked by the new police station. It’s not all new, but what they basically did was add a huge new addition onto the existing building. I think they just completed it a year or so ago. Colour me unimpressed. Looks ugly without being threatening. But look at that blue sky.
Behind the police station is the Guelph Armoury, home to the 11th Field Artillery Regiment. Built in 1906-1907 in the Gothic Revival Style, and opened in 1911. Just in time to start training young fellows for the big dance that was about to start across the pond. I was in the mess once for some kind of a party. I was in the reserves when I was in school, but it was a Toronto regiment.
Behind the Armoury is the train station. Cute little building. Nobody’s ever in it. You buy your tickets online. But at least during business hours the building is open so you can step in to get out of the rain.
Across from the train station is the bus station.
That’s a train in the background.
Next stop was the book sale, which was again held out in the Northwest Industrial Park. Also known as the back of beyond. I miss the days when they had a location for it downtown. But I think it’s hard to find a place with enough space.
I’ve mentioned before about the lack of facilities. This year they must have been listening to some feedback because they had one (1) portable toilet across from where everyone lined up to get in. That thundershack was getting a lot of use.
Not much to report about the actual sale. It was quite well attended on Thursday. This is the parking situation on the road across from the site. If you drove (and most people do) then you were going to have a long walk to the sale. I don’t know where this row of cars ended. Somewhere over the horizon.
I think I bought about 30 books over the two days. A lot more than last year. A few titles I even had stored in my shopping cart at an online bookseller, so they were real wins. And some more obscure titles that I don’t know if I’ll ever get to. I’ve been just thinking recently about how I probably have more books now than I’ll every be able to read. Intimations of mortality.
On Saturday, when I got back, the bus let me off at the University Centre, where an old friend of mine was running a board- and role-playing game convention. He was playing a game called Zombiecide. This is what it looks like.
It sounded like fun. I was invited to play but I figured it would take me too long to get up to speed. Some of the other tables had role-playing games set up on them. On one the dungeonmaster running things had his laptop hooked up to a flat-screen TV lying face-up on the table, with the players moving their figures around on top of it, where the map was displayed. I was quite impressed by that.
Anyway, those were the highlights for the weekend. Maybe I’ll do it again next year. Much as I enjoy it, (a) I don’t need any more books and (b) it really is out of the way. But as long as my back holds out I’ll probably keep saddling up and make the trek. Thanks for reading!
OK, so they didn’t proof read this one.
