Enter here.

I’ve been attending the annual Friends of the Guelph Public Library Book Sale for the last several years, and writing about it has become a part of the whole experience (see my take on the 2016, 2019, and 2022 editions). So here we go with notes on the 2023 experience!

First off, they moved the date up a month this year and I approve. It’s still a nice walk downtown in September, whereas in October, at night, it can get pretty cold and it’s hard to decide how to dress since I’m on foot and it’s quite a hike back carrying heavy bags of books, which means I can overheat quickly.

I’m quite proud of myself managing that hike home, by the way. It’s a sort of test of strength and general fitness. Over an hour’s march, carrying approximately 50 pounds of books, up one major hill (at least a major hill for Guelph). And it’s a test I passed again this year! I’m not an old man yet.

Anyway, back to the sale. For whatever reason I arrived quite early for the first day of the sale and was number 20 in line to get in. I’m usually nowhere near that close to the front. This made me consider my book-buying strategy when they opened the doors and we started going in. What were the most popular areas likely to be? I should hit them first, as they’d be picked clean of any treasures fairly quickly.

The areas I spend most time in are history, military history, politics, and true crime. But those rooms also draw the fewest book buyers. On the other hand, I knew that the room for graphic novels would be hit hard, early. Which is what happened. Despite being so close to the front, by the time I got to the graphic novels/comic books room a pair of buyers had already shoveled nearly half of what was on offer into boxes. I mean, they were really clearing things out. I was not impressed, especially as they were both wearing hoodies pulled up over their heads. What was up with that?

Luckily for me, Team Hoody had begun by grabbing all the manga books and I had no interest in them. So I did manage to score six Marvel Essentials anthologies in mint condition. These sell for $45-$50 each if you buy them new. Even from discount booksellers online I pay $15-$20 for them. These cost me $2 each! Quite a haul! I was glad I decided to hit that room first. After a couple of days there were literally no comics left.

Something else that caught my eye was someone getting out their phone to scan titles and one of the volunteers telling him that wasn’t allowed. I’d thought scanning bad behaviour when I first noticed people doing it five years ago, but I didn’t think there was anything strictly wrong about it. Still, when I checked the sale’s webpage there was a notice saying “NO SCANNING PLEASE,” so I guess everyone had fair warning.

I went back twice to visit the sale on subsequent days (it runs for five days), and had a good time even if it seemed as though the selection was a bit poorer this year. Here are some other observations.

I enjoyed buying one history of the Vietnam War that looked like new and when I opened it up I found the sales receipt tucked inside from 20 years ago. Never read! But it will be now.

On my second day I waited in line with a woman who was a big collector of DVDs. There’s a room of DVDs at the sale where you can get any DVD (or boxed set) for $1 and that was the only room she was interested in. She was telling me she had 4,000 DVDs at home. She doesn’t stream and doesn’t even own an iPhone or other such device. An old-school lady after my own heart, except she wasn’t interested in books.

I had a hard time figuring out why puzzles were so expensive. $7? I’ve had to do a lot of puzzles since COVID (helping out with care for a sick family member) and my sister usually picks them up in bulk from flea markets where they run between $1 and $2. Which is what books cost at the sale. Why should a puzzle cost so much more than a book? It’s not like you do many puzzles over and over again, so once you’re done with them they just get donated to charities so they can go back into circulation.

The final day of the sale they price dropped everything, something that, for the first time, they didn’t do last year. This made DVDs 5-for-$1. So I picked up 10 that I likely wouldn’t have bought if they’d cast more than 20 cents each. I also got more books and made the final hike home up Gordon Street Hill.

Until next year!