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Posted byJonAugust 5, 2019Posted inUncategorizedTags:book shopping, books, donation, library, read, reading
Today we bought 150 books.
A few years ago, a friend became a new teacher at a school that didn’t have any books in the classroom library. We adopted the classroom and ended up donating something like 300 books. From there, we adopted an entire school library, and then a special library for at-risk students, and now we’ve just adopted our fourth library.
So that meant… it was off to the Half-Price Books Warehouse Sale!
After church this morning, a friend and her daughter came over to watch our insanity of children. (A group of children is called an insanity. Trust me.) And off my Bride I went… to the sale!
It took two and a half hours to get there. Stupid traffic.
But on the way we got to laugh together a lot. We like playing this game – ever see Chopped? The contestants are handed four really random ingredients and have to make a meal out of them. So we suggest ingredients to each other and try to be creative with how we’d use them.
It should be noted, I cook as well as a rock, so don’t ever have me actually do this for you.
But we were in high spirits when we finally tracked down the arena holding the sale. We entered. An arena full of tables full of books. Full to overflowing.
The very definition of Valhalla.
Three hours until the entire thing closed. We had to get to work.
I was wooed by the table of graphic novels. My Bride left me behind to get to work on the children’s books. She left me the cart. “You’ll catch up soon,” she said. And then I lost my way among the religious books tables, trying to fill in holes in my professional library.
Then I got a text: “OUT OF HANDS!”
Except I didn’t see the text until a half hour after my Bride sent them… multiple texts all telling me to get over to her…
So I got over to her! She had three PILES of books.
But I was there to save the day with the cart! Late!
Anyway, she filled up half the cart. And we continued shopping, each of us grabbing anything we thought might be good for the classroom we searched for.
We, um, we filled up our cart pretty good.
It takes work to sort that many books! Also, it’s not great doing it while sitting on a cement floor…
So we shuffled off to an unused corner of the arena to start weeding through. Because we were both grabbing things, there were a lot of doubles. At times we’d even intentionally grabbed doubles, so later in weeding we could grab whichever one was in better condition.
We were still left with a lot of books.
And my Bride looked up at me. “We should get all of these.”
There’s a reason I married her.
After paying and securing the four boxes of books in my trunk, we headed over to a local deli for supper. My Bride got some potato soup, which tried to kill her. (She doesn’t do melted cheese well.) She tried to kill it back.
Ever see a grown woman try to kill soup? It’s a pretty adorable sight.
Anyway, we made it home, and as I type this she’s looking up AR scores for all the books, so they’re all labeled when we deliver the package on Tuesday.
One of the best things you can do as a reader is share your love of reading. And it’s awfully hard to share that love of reading if there aren’t books available. So… we’re sharing the ability to love books, and having a blast doing it.
Let me recommend, if you love reading: Head over to a local school, and ask if their library is looking for donations. Please, please, don’t just give what you feel like giving. Ask. And then look for that. We were looking for specific reading grades. You can find the reading grades of a lot of books at Arbookfinder.com. If the library is looking for certain genres or certain formats (say, hardcovers), look for those things. It doesn’t matter how much you enjoyed something; the idea is to help the library, not help yourself.
But if you listen and provide what’s wanted, you’ll get to share the joy of reading.
And it’s a joy worth sharing.
Posted byJonAugust 5, 2019Posted inUncategorizedTags:book shopping, books, donation, library, read, reading
Jon lives in Kentucky with his wife and an insanity of children. (A group of children is called an insanity. Trust me.) View more posts