Further Adventures of.... by Jim Hart

Last weekend one of our local libraries held their annual book sale. This is an event to raise money by selling donated books. Lots of donated books. Tables and piles of donated books.

The smallest sections were RELIGION and SCI-FI, which is where I headed first. The largest section, of course, was FICTION. The MYSTERY section was pretty full also, though.

It didn’t take me long to go through the Religion section and I quickly scored a copy of 90 Minutes in Heaven. The Sci-fi tables yielded Greg Bear’s Moving Mars. In the Fiction section I was pretty happy to find a book by Ted Dekker, and then one by Creston Mapes in the Mystery Section.

It’s interesting to note that I could have bought the complete set, in hardcover, of the Left Behind series. I also could have picked up the entire Twilight trilogy. But I left them for someone else.

I did notice that while poking through the selections I was mentally taking inventory of what titles were already in my private library. And specifically which ones were on a shelf, or in a pile, or in a box. “Do I have this book?” “Do I need another copy of that one?” Can you relate?

I was also wondering why there were fewer books to be found in the religion and sci-fi sections. I only came up with these reasons:

1) Those categories are not top selling, so naturally they are outnumbered by other genres.

2) Readers tend to hold on to, and treasure, their religious and sci-fi books.

3) All of the above

And of course it makes me ask “how hard is it for you to give away your books?”

It’s always exciting to encounter a good used book sale. But, especially for those active in the publishing industry, we still know how important (and thrilling) it is to buy a new book from the shelf of whatever local bookstore still remains in our community.