The Book Sale

We went. Twice.

Showed up at 9:00am when the doors opened. Long line but we don't panic any more - it always moves fast. Had our lists ready, here's mine.

Remember last year when I found 3 books on the first table? Yeah, not so this year. I didn't find one book on my list! This is not to say it was a bust, it's never a bust. Here are our books from Saturday.

This was Brad's year. His first glance down at a table and his gaze landed directly on one of the books on his list. I think he got 9 or 10 off his list! I even found one or two that I knew he wanted.

After browsing for 4 hours, our feet were on fire. It was time to check out. We went home and combed through our haul - the usual tradition....

There are some books in my pile that might be misses for me...a couple guys who I thought were other authors, a complete shot in the dark, but the king: Ignition. I was getting desperate and only read part of the synopsis?! An astronaut named Iceberg Friese who saves Cape Canaveral from terrorists?!

The next day we were lounging around and I nudged Brad and asked him if he wanted to go again. He wasn't completely opposed (which was a surprise) so we went. We told ourselves that it was an experiment - we wanted to see how picked over it was the next afternoon.

It was the last day, a couple hours before the sale was over and we were about to walk past the last table which is the "Volunteer Picks" table and Brad declares "I want Oryx and Crake, in good condition." I laughed out loud at him and wished him good luck. Five minutes later I found it and threw it at him.

On that note I found one of the books from my list that day.

Here are our books from Sunday.

Here's where it gets crazy.

The 'top book' that both of us wanted this year was Dan Simmons' Hyperion. We had donated it to the book sale 2 weeks ago because our copy wasn't in very good shape. I thought I had scored big time when I found it in the Fiction section. There was major fist pumping happening. Major.

We brought it home and realized....it's the same book we donated.

But it's in worse shape now because the first 40 pages are missing.