Today I drove to Magnuson Park, Seattle to the largest book sale I have ever attended. I had $30 of cash in my pocket (John wanted to reduce that budget when I mentioned that all books were a dollar but I didn’t let him. “But honey, we have no room” fell on deaf ears and I happily drove off).

The book sale was in one of the large hangar style buildings of a naval (I think?) base that used to operate here. Online it said they sold over 200,000 books last year and I could easily imagine that when I saw the size of the place.

The only sad part about such a large sale is that you know you won’t be able to look at everything (especially with all the books underneath the tables as well) and that it can’t really be organized in alphabetical order due to the sheer volume so you really have weed through a category to find what you want.

I was lucky enough to find exactly what I was looking for in a few cases: Mainly, the first two books of The Crosswick Journals by Madeleine L’Engle (now I only need the third one to complete my set) as well as three more P.D. James books – The Black Tower, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and Death in Holy Orders. Other books that I’ve already read but want to own included: Dorothy Sayer’s Gaudy Night, Watership Down, Possession by A.S. Byatt which I just recently read and found brilliant and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, which it turns out, I already owned. I had already called John about which P.D. James books I had, so I didn’t want to bother him again – oh well, it was only 50 cents and I can donate it right back to a book sale probably.Three kid’s books: Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. Jacob Have I Loved and The Bridge to Terabithia both by Katherine Paterson.

What I’m really excited about are the books I found that I have not yet read and hope will be good:

Emily Carr’s Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of an Artist

Annie Dillard’s Maytrees

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Ursula Hegi’s Hotel of the Saints

Charlotte Armstrong’s A Dram of Poison (this very much looked like an Agatha Christie, so I thought I would give it a whirl). My final two purchases were 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith (I like his Ladies Detective agency series) and Chaim Potok’s Davita’s Harp (I read My Name is Asher Lev in high school but never got around to his others).

Probably my strangest purchase was The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology – I figured this might be useful somewhere along my writer’s journey and already today I have been able to use some of the trivia I learned off the back cover.

All this bounty (20 books in all) cost me a mere $17. I couldn’t really carry any more than that either because some were quite heavy hardbacks so I had to stop short of the budget. Oh well – it was probably wise because it is true that we have no more bookshelves available in our house and no room for more bookcases.

I walked back to my car (probably half a mile) grinning from ear to ear and only realizing it when I felt the grit of dust in my teeth from the cars that had been going by. Oops.

Now comes the part where I stop blogging and have to decide what to read first. Common sense tells me all of these will have to wait until I’ve read the four books from the library because these ones don’t have a due date.