LIbrary book sale

Actually a library book *store*. I went to the Chattanooga, TN, library bookstore and bought a book of food essays by Elizabeth David for $3.25.

FREE books

Oh my. A local friend and bookstore owner was having a book giveaway/fundraiser to support a good friend.

I got um...a lot of books. OK they weren't really free - I donated money to the cause.

Reading Like a Writer - Francine Prose
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (an ARC - I've read this but wanted to own it)
Adverbs by Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket)
Reading in Bed - edited by Steven Gilbar
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
The Three-Martini Playdate
The Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl

And a TON of picture books for my daughter.

Awesome.

Also a friend gave me Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons for my birthday.

Cheap books with free shipping, oh my

I need to make a post about all the awesome books a friend gave me yesterday, but first...

BookCloseouts.com is having an AWESOME sale. First, all cookbooks are on sale for 35% off of their already cheap prices.

Second, they're doing FREE SHIPPING on orders of $35 or more. I can easily hit that - watch for a post in the future with my order, I'm sure.

To get the free shipping, use coupon number: freeshipping and coupon password: bookcloseouts.com - easy peasy!

If you love books like me, you really need to take advantage of this deal.

Church sale

I've been pretty good lately about buying books. I went on vacation and even went to a thrift store and several local indie booksellers and still...nothing.

But yesterday I hit a church sale. I got the following for 50 cents each:

- The Great American Bathroom Book Volume 1 (I have 2 and 3 - they're basically giant Cliffs Notes about great works of literature)
- Clark's Big Book of Bargains (Clark Howard's book)
- American Harvest by Nava Atlas (one of my favorite vegetarian cookbook authors)
- The Klutz Cats Cradle book (without the elastic) (They threw this in for free.)
- A tiny book about otters called Otter On His Own. I love otters. (They threw this in for free too.)

Back to the book sale!

I confess, I couldn't stay away. I went with a friend to the giant booksale on half-price day without my kid so I could really browse.

It was shockingly NOT picked over. Which made it difficult because everything was around $1 or 50 cents and I *had* to put things back because honestly, I have too many books now.

(I have been reading Biblioholism and man, I have it bad.)

Blue dots were 50 cents, green dots were $1.











Book fast!!!!!!

Giant book sale!

Every year a consortium of libraries have one giant book sale at a local mall. Today I managed to go on day one, early on. That said, I also had my kid with me, so I couldn't have a leisurely browse. I had to scan and grab, scan and grab, and keep moving.

I spent $9 and got 7 books (and oops, one accidentally didn't get tallied).
















I kind of want to try to go back without the kid, although I also know it will be more picked over. Sunday afternoon is half-price time...

I also got another book from paperback swap - Learning to Bow by Bruce Feller, about teaching in Japan (I saw it at a booksale and decided to get it from PBS instead) and another PBS book is on its way - Biblioholism, about being addicted to...books. Seemed appropriate.

Just one...

I feel like I've forgotten to mention something...we did get an autographed copy of Skippyjon Jones last week. Maybe that.

Today - a mad dash through the thrift store, just to get it out of my system. I scored Dishwasher by Dishwasher Pete - a zine book! Yes! And I started reading it in the car and couldn't put it down. I've been reading travelogues that aren't that great so...this was fun.

Library book sale!

First, I got The May Queen from Paperback Swap - hooray! Looking forward to reading this collection of essays about being in your 30s.

Yesterday kicked off the Decatur Book Festival. And the first thing I did was go to the library booksale when it opened - it was ridiculously crowded with festival goes and people with little scanners on their phones/PDAs (to find out which books are "valuable" - seems pretty tedious to me). However, I'm pretty happy with my scores. Blue dots were a dollar, red were 50 cents, green were $2:



Present for a friend



Alas, I already had the 2006 Best American Nonrequired Reading. I'll probably give this to another friend.

Thrift store again!

I feel like it's been awhile since I went thrifting but...I don't think it's really true.

Anyway, we went to Goodwill to drop off many things - I donated about ten books - and I then bought two books for $1.50 each: Anne Lamott's Plan B and Laurie Notaro's Autobiography of a Fat Bride.

Note to self: I now have all of Anne Lamott's books (I think - at least all her nonfiction) and 90% of Laurie Notaro's.

On its way to me from Paperback Swap: The May Queen, a collection of essays about being in your 30s. And did I mention the Photoshop 6 book I got from PBS? I can't remember. I have a bunch of credits there but am - for now - hoarding them until things from my wish list come around.

Thrift store!

I hit one thrift store today but was called away before I had a chance to look at every single book... Still, I got things I'm happy with:



$1.50 each.



75 cents. I already have this (thrifted...), but my daughter ripped a page so I decided to get an extra copy. Again, like with other children's book doubles I have, I also want to use the art for other things.

Paperback Swap!

OK, I have FAR too many books.

So I've started listing some on Paperback Swap.

This won't really get RID of a lot of books, as it's kind of a 1:1 trade type thing, but it will at least help me clear out books I'm done with and get ones I really want.



My profile page is at http://marla-tiara.paperbackswap.com - add me as a Buddy if you like!

Amazon!

I had to buy a present for a friend, so I threw in a copy of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles for me. :) (All for free thanks to SwagBucks!)

One book from a thrift store

I went to a very small Salvation Army and bought my daughter Dog Train by Sandra Boynton for $1.

So now I am even MORE mad at myself for not buying the other Boynton CD/book (sans CD) that I saw last week. (Rhinoceros Tap) Because now I have 3 out of the 4 books like this. Hrmph.

More thrifting!

Ah, two thrift store trips in one week. Now I'm good for a few more weeks...

First I hit the same store I was at on Wednesday (where I got the majority of the books in the last post). The store was running a 50% off sale, but nothing was really that exciting.



Cookbook, 50 cents. Stinky Cheese Man, $1. I already have a lovely copy of SCM, but I grabbed this for crafty purposes, including possibly framing some of the pages.

Next Value Village:



$1.50 each.



80 cents for Blue Moo, 40 cents for Personal Penguin. Blue Moo is missing the CD, which made me hesitate, but I can get a copy of the CD elsewhere. And after I bought it I regretted NOT buying another Boynton CD-with-book-minus-the-CD that I saw on Wednesday. Ah well, next time I see it I'll get it.

Finally, Goodwill:



$1.50 for the hardcovers, 75 cents for the paperback (Yay! Dar Williams's book!). I already have Olivia but again, this is for crafts/framing. The author of the small alphabet book was one of my professors in grad school.



$1.50. I don't really need any more cookbooks, ever, but this was cute.

OK, back to book fast! ;)

PS Bookcloseouts.com is having a HUGE sale on children's books. I may have to break my book fast...check it out!

Thrift stores!

Yay! I needed more books. ;)



99 cents.



$1.50 each.

Yard sale

I bought two books at a friend's yard sale - a book all about cats (caring, feeding, treating illnesses, etc.) and a birdwatching book that I plan to cut up and use for crafts and buttons.

I haven't had a chance to take pictures but I wanted to get them down.

Mostly I've been behaved for the past few weeks (it feels like forever!) and have been getting my fix at the library instead.

Thrifting

Thrift store #1 (Value Village)...

$1.50 each:



Store #2 (Goodwill), where I apparently decided to buy extra copies of books I already had. *SIGH* I hate when that happens.

$1.50 each and I already have the Travelers Tale book. Boo. I love that series and always just grab any of them that I see...figures I already have this one.



$2.50 each and...I already have Mothers Who Think in paperback. I'm not sure which one I'll keep and which one will become a gift to one of my various mom friends:



I love Spook by Mary Roach - I have also read Stiff (my favorite) and Bonk - and, as you may have learned, I cannot resist food porn in the form of a Chronicle cookbook - check out the inside:



*drool*

$1.25 (half price):



I love Elisha Cooper and either own or have read several of his books both for kids and grownups.

And finally, my friend scored this for me for 50 cents at a different store:



I have been *DYING* to read this (and yes, I love the Poe album too). Yesssss. She also found me two essay collections about Buffy/Angel and a copy of The Reader and a full set of Beatrix Potter books... (no pictures so far, maybe later).

That's all for now! TOTALLY going on a book fast starting today. Totally. ;)

PS The Treasure Map of Boys by e. lockhart is AMAZING. I really need to find time to write a proper review but I read it in a single sitting, staying up late to finish it.

Two yard sales!

Yard sale #1 was to benefit a sick Maine Coon cat - awww. I got these two books for $1 each and also got some original robot art (for free, but we made a donation to the kitty). Nice.





The inside of the really nifty Barcelona book:



Yard sale #2 had all books for 25 cents. I found one I wanted, but I only had a $5 bill so I forced myself (HA) to find three more...

The book I really wanted:



The other three that are also fabulous:





(I may already have the Cool Cats book but I got it to cut up/frame/be crafty with...)

New book + book sale!

First, I won an ARC of e. lockhart's latest book, The Treasure Map of Boys, and I am SO excited to read it. I actually plan on reviewing it here (oooh, aaaah) so stay tuned.

Second, Book Closeouts is having a huge sale and I am trying to resist but...there are a few things I want...*sigh*.

Third, I traded the two Jen Lancaster books I had with a friend for the Jen Lancaster book she had - Such a Pretty Fat.

Otherwise, I've been pretty restrained, and I even have a pretty big "give away" pile (including Such a Pretty Fat) that I may just give away on this here blog. I think.

Random thrift store trip

There's a thrift store near where my husband goes ice skating, and he wanted to go skating and I didn't, so he dropped me and my daughter off at the store. (She was less than pleased, but that's not really part of this story.)

I bought things other than books this time (gasp! horror!) but I'll just show you the books. ;)



All of the books were $1.50 except the one on the bottom row, middle, which was half price (75 cents). Turns out that book is not something I'm interested in, as it is essays about motherhood, but is also very religious. I will be giving it away or something. I'm not a huge RR fan but for $1.50 I figured I could check it out. The salsa book is a Chronicle book (yay) and I love salsa. Paul Feig is funny, and the Joyce Maynard book looks really good.

Oh, but I thought I recognized the name Joyce Maynard and couldn't figure out why. I even called a friend of mine and she was like "Yeah, sounds familiar but I don't know who she is offhand."

From Wikipedia, "Daphne Joyce Maynard (born November 5, 1953) is an American author who, in addition to her own literary career, is known for the relationship she had with author J. D. Salinger when she was 18."

OH! Cool.

Yay!

Back to the church sale...

So I went back to the church sale - and while I was picking through the books, they announced that it was one box of books for $1. Exciting! Well, so I thought. I grabbed the rest of the Golden Book encyclopedias that I had seen yesterday - 10 volumes, all to be chopped up for crafting - and then saw The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell (missing dust jacket), a "book for boys" with lots of pictures to chop up and reuse, and then a coffee table book called 24 Hours in Dekalb County (where I live). And then - OOOOH - The Sandman: Book of Dreams. Like, I was so ridiculously excited I almost called my friend about it.

I pay, then I wander the rest of the sale, then duck back into the book section and find The American Way of Birth and a book about the ritual of sitting down to dinner (I'll fill in the title later). The kid let me take them since I'd already bought my box (really a bag) of books.

So why no pictures? I'm still pouting. I got in the car afterward and my Sandman book? Damp - which I'd suspected - and starting to grow a light green mold. If nothing else, I don't want this book infecting my other books. So, sigh sigh, I put it directly in the recycle bin. And The American Way of Birth? Has speckles of brown mold on top, but doesn't seem to be to damp, so I may put it in the sun to see what happens (or maybe - seriously - use sandpaper on it), but I've also requested a copy from the library because I really want to read it (I started skimming it in the car and it's amazing). And the Wordy Shipmates is also vaguely damp. I mean, for an average of 6.5 cents per book, the financial loss is fine, but MAN I wanted to read these!

Oh well.

It pays to wait a day to go to the church sale...

Every year a local church has a MASSIVE yard sale, with everything kind of thrown out on their huge lawn. It's chaotic, but it's also cheap. I went by not expecting to find anything, and I was rewarded with what looked like acres of books. The books were tossed haphazardly in cardboard boxes. Yesterday it rained - and it looked like they'd thrown tarps over the boxes, but the ground was wet and some of the books were wet. As a result, all books were 2/$1 - a woman told me that yesterday they were $2/hardbacks.

I managed to look through the books while wearing my daughter in a front carry in an Ergo. I'd walk by the boxes, and if something caught my eye, I'd have to carefully lower us both down so I could see. This probably meant that I bought fewer books than I really could have - and since I walked to the sale and had to carry everything, I also had to deal with the weight of the books. And they were HEAVY.

Anyway, here's round one. I think I may go back tomorrow to see about round two...



Books for my daughter (and me). You may recall that I got her Brown Bear, Brown Bear at a recent yard sale. Yeah, she already has ripped a few of the pages. The board book will work much better.



I am VERY excited about the Laura Ingalls Wilder songbook. And I picked up and put down several ridiculous cookbooks but wound up only keeping the one that you see here. Gross diet food! Yes!



How Things Work is just neat. The book on the right is for chopping up for craft projects. They actually had several volumes at the sale, but this one intrigued me the most. If I go back, I may grab others.



I've been wanting to read Eat This, Not That for some time. It looks interesting. And the dog book is for a friend (who happens to be my thrifting partner in crime as well). Both are in perfect condition.



Best score of the sale. As far as I can tell this is complete - it has a book, a poster, and, well, letters (literal letters of the alphabet). The price tag on it is $20, and it's something I've wanted for a very long time. Hooray!

I also bought a shirt for a quarter, but by then my bag was too heavy to get anything else...