Friends of the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Winter Warehouse Sale

Holy crap. I just got back from the Friends of the Library's warehouse sale. I was an am very, very impressed with the whole affair. I was going to allow myself to decompress, but since this sale will be going on for a few more days, I figured I should get this posted to try to convince as many people as possible to get over there.

The Friends of the Library Warehouse, which is north of downtown by about ten miles in Hartwell, houses a great deal of the material donated to them. They are open periodically for regular sales, but they are hosting their winter sale during this long weekend. As a member of Friends of the Library, I had been waiting for this sale for some time. I headed over there this morning to see what I could get my hands on. Oh man, did I ever find some stuff to buy.

Above: Storefront and the front room of the warehouse

I was over my head almost from the get-go. Between the hustle and bustle of the customers and the amount of material available for sale, it was very overwhelming (but in a good way). At first I was trying to look at everything, but had to scale it down. I decided to head over to the paperback literature section and see what I could find from my list for $.50 apiece.

Above: The paperback literature section

I finally had to stop myself. When the smoke cleared, what did I end up with?

Dubliners by James Joyce

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque

Cannery Row by Steinbeck

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

Howards End by EM Forster

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner

Henderson the Rain King by Bellow

The Idiot by Dostoevsky

The Scarlett Letter by Hawthorne

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Kim by Kipling

Herzog by Bellow

Babbit by Sinclair Lewis

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce

Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner

Women in Love by DH Lawrence

The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway

How much do you think the twenty-three books cost? Fifty bucks? Sixty? Nope. For twenty-three of the best books ever written, I paid a whopping seventeen dollars. Yes, under a buck a book. You can't beat that with a stick. With all of the mass market paperbacks being priced at fifty cents, you can get a year's worth of reading for less than the price of a new hardcover book at Borders. 

The volunteers at the sale were also tremendous. They were extremely helpful. I was approached by at least five people asking if I needed help finding anything in particular. The checkout line was quick moving, regardless of the crowd all ready to get home and get reading their new books. 

What I'm going to say is this: if you can read (and if you can't, it's odd that you're on this site since my photography sucks), get over to the book sale this weekend. It runs until Monday and you're bound to find something you're like. The not only have books of every genre imaginable, but also have movies, books on tape, graphic novels, and other various media. I couldn't recommend this highly enough. 

Everything you need to know about this the Friends of the Library and their current and future sales can be found at their website.