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...

New thrift store, same old tricks.

*crickets* Ah, OK, so nobody's really reading. ;)

So today my husband found me a new thrift store to check out - a St. Vincents.

The good: Big room devoted to books, slightly-less-than-Goodwill prices, nice selection.
The bad: They mark up books on a whim, and they write the price *in Sharpie* on the cover or *in pen* on the inside. This makes me twitch. I know that when I buy used/thrifted books they won't be pristine, but when I want to buy a funny vintage cookbook for the cover and it has a big black $2 written on it, well, it's not as exciting. They also marked up a gorgeous cookbook about cocktails and a lovely Chronicle book with recipes from the CIA (Culinary Institute, not the government agency, though that would be funny). I have far too many cookbooks to pay $3 or $4 for something that just looks pretty, so back on the shelf they went.

Oh but don't think I left empty handed!



Top left - Looking for Mercy Street by Linda Sexton. $2. It was in the dollar section but it apparently didn't have the magic secret dot on it. The sweet little old lady was like "sorry!" and I said "eh, OK, I'll get it anyway."
Top right - Eating My Words by Mimi Sheraton. This was in the $1 section and did have the proper dot. I've wanted to read this for a while. Yay!
Bottom left - Super Baby Food. My kid is a bit older and doesn't need "baby food" but when I flipped through, the book had a bunch of cool recipes. I told you I've started collecting this type of cookbook! $1.50 and written in pen on the inside (for no good reason - all large-ish paperback books are $1.50 unless otherwise marked).
Bottom right - The Unsavvy Traveler. AKA a Seal Press book. Great publisher, so I grabbed it. $1.50.
(My husband also bought two books. Sheesh!)

And this isn't a book but it's too cool to not post:



I had this edition as a kid. I wanted to use it for crafts, my husband wants to play it. As it is sealed, we don't know whether it's a complete game anyway, so that will help determine what it finally becomes. PS SEE THE SHARPIE ON THE BOX? ARGH.