Book Fair in Review

I clocked 8 volunteer hours leading up to this year's annual library book sale. I built boxes for the book sorters to sort into – I am an artist with a tape gun – and then I packed up two boxes of children's books for sale up on the third floor. 

 

Thinking of those labors makes me smile because I actually got into an argument over A Separate Peace. Someone had slipped it in with the children's books. Obviously I thought this was a mistake and asked everyone – the room of volunteers, no one in particular – where it belonged. One of the sorters who took her sorting very seriously insisted that since it was Young Adult book, it was in the right place. I couldn't help it, putting this tale of disability, war and death in the same box as as Horrible Harry and The Green Slime and Llama Llama Loves to Read just struck me as funny. So now I've not only questioned her, I have laughed. It was a little tense. (I still think it's funny.) 

My efforts earned me the right to peruse the books that were left after the sale and just take whatever I want. I took two books for my aunt and two for Little Violet. I'm especially excited for Cinco Monitos Leen en la Cama (5 Little Monkeys Read in Bed). Her biological grandfather is Mexican and likes spending time with her. I hope he'll enjoy reading this to her. I also grabbed a humorous retrospective on Beatlemania for my oldest friend. She's putting effort into our relationship and I want to respond in kind.

 

And now for my annual observation.  Every year there's a book donated in bigger numbers than any other; a book many of my neighbors bought and then decided not to keep. I suspect it's a tome chosen by local book clubs. This year's "winner" seems remarkably random, as it was originally published back in 2003, but I found multiple copies not only on the Humor table but also in Politics and Current Affairs. It's primacy cannot be denied.

2026: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken 

2025: Living History by Hillary Clinton 

2024: Water for Elephants

2023: My Life by Bill Clinton

2022, 2019, 2018 and 2017: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2016: The Help

2015: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

2014: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2013: The DaVinci Code

2012: Sixkill (a Spenser Mystery)

2011: The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

2010: Scarlett, the Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind

2009: My Life by Bill Clinton

2008: The DaVinci Code

2007: The Nanny Diaries

2006: The Corrections