Back to the Books

/ Alex Good

This weekend marked the 17th Annual Friends of the Guelph Public Library Book Sale. I always go to these, though since they moved to a new location starting last year I haven’t gone on multiple days. It’s a good location in terms of space but it’s located at the opposite end of the city from me so I can’t just walk there, as I did when it was downtown. Going downtown is a hike for me, but doable. And the thing is, I much prefer a long walk to a short bus ride. Even if I have heavy bags to carry! But that’s the way it goes.

Where I started from.

When I hopped on the bus downtown there were a couple of other people who got on the same bus with me who were dragging shopping buggies. It was clear they were heading to the same place I was. One of them was a little old guy. I would put him in his mid to late 70s. Well, when the bus arrived and stopped, just on the other side of the street from the warehouse the sale was in, this guy flew off, and then charged across the street so quickly traffic had to slam on the brakes and honk at him. He didn’t care. And he didn’t stop running. He sprinted the length of the warehouse, dragging his buggy behind him the whole way until he got to the line waiting to get in.

He impressed me with what good shape he was in, but I was honestly shaking my head at this. We were early. Really early. Like 90 minutes before opening. There were only 20 people in line. By the time they opened the doors there would be close to 300, but there was no limit on how many people they were going to admit so it really didn’t make much difference where you were in line. So what on earth was the rush? There was almost nobody else around. As it turned out he was just ahead of me in the line and I was taking my time (looking both ways before I crossed the street). Did he just want to beat me? We weren’t even interested in the same parts of the sale.

Anyway, they had the same little signs posted along the line as they did last year. Things like this:

Not a question!

And honestly, right beside the guy in such a rush, this was the sign:

I wonder if this registered with him at all. I also wonder what the bottom two lines mean. I felt like it was a joke I was missing.

The doors opened promptly at 2. Luckily we didn’t get rained on while we were waiting. There was a lot of rain in the area, and storm clouds passing overhead, and no cover in the line. But we were lucky.

Inside it was the usual crowd scene. Here’s a picture of part of it:

Apparently they had over 85,000 volumes for sale. I think that was probably a low count. Anyway, it was very well organized and all the volunteers were very nice, which I can’t imagine is easy. I’m sure they have to deal with their share of idiots.

I didn’t get that many books. I think 9 or 10. But they were heavy enough and I didn’t have a buggy. My rule is that I can’t buy more books than I can carry home. Some sections of the sale seemed to have a lot less than in previous years. Comics/graphic novels were particularly weak, unless somebody just took whole boxes of them before I wandered over to that section. I’ve seen that happen before. As per usual, there were a lot of the sorts of books you’d expect (like bestsellers that nobody wants to hang on to), with a few treasures mixed in. But most of all, it does my heart good to see so many people still interested in physical books. They still believe!

26 thoughts on “Back to the Books”

  1. I’d love a huge book fair like that. If you don’t have a buggy do you just pile them in your arms and carry them? That seems a bit unnecessarily hardcore. Get some wheels! 🤣

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  2. Maybe he makes his living sell off old books on ebay for a dollar profit? If that is the case, his life is so miserable that I’m sure he wouldn’t care if a car ran him over 😉

    Thanks for taking the inside picture. That really helps give the proper scale. Did they solve the restroom problem? I seem to remember they had contradictory signs last year or the year before saying they had restrooms but they weren’t available.

    And I’m with Fraggle. Show us the loot!

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    • They tend to specially priced, instead of the general rule of $4 for a hardcover, $2 for a paperback. But I couldn’t say much because I never even look in that section. I’m a great reader, but I’ve never been a book collector, searching out rare editions and the like.

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