Spring Cleaning

Yet one more reason to not enjoy the time of year when I can remove the snow brush/ice scraper from the car. In reality, I would probably prefer removing my own eyeballs with a grapefruit spoon to participating in the ritual of spring cleaning. Unfortunately, (1) I imagine there will be a time in the future when having eyes will come in handy, and (2) I'd like to keep some semblance of peace in the house, so I get to participate.

This weekend's portion of the cleaning involved the purge of books accumulated over the past few years. We collected all of the books and began to sort. This is the point when I realized that if I had not previously bought every book I saw on impulse, I might already be retired and living in a mansion on the beach somewhere. We go through the sorting process, placing the books we don't want in one pile and the books we want to keep in another. The discard pile grew larger and larger, while the keep pile consisted of only a few books I wanted to keep and a few I hadn't had a chance to read yet.

After the sorting, it was time to figure out how to get rid of the extras. I've been to second hand bookstores before, and they all seem pretty much the same: Way too happy lady sitting at the front desk...Every book that has ever been on the best seller list available in 15 copies in each of 10 editions...Shelves upon shelves of romance novels and "historical fiction", which is, in fact, code for porn for (post-) menopausal women, not to mention likely the reason why the lady at the front is so happy...anything and everything brought into the store is purchased, but you receive only store credit. That seemed like the best way to go, so I looked in our phone book and found the location of the nearest used bookstore. We loaded up the car and were on our way. It certainly didn't quite match up with my expectations.

We walked in to the dimly lit, crowed store to find an bearded, older gentleman at the desk, and an woman sitting on a stool in the middle of the entryway eating a sandwich. I asked about selling used books and he said to bring them in, but warned that he turned away most things. As we went to the car to get books to bring in, MK told me she was going to stay in the car, as the store gave her the creeps. I understood. It didn't exactly give me the creeps, but it was overcrowded and smelled like urine; I didn't have much desire to be in there either. I brought the books in to be scrutinized by Bearded Man and began to browse the shelves (by this point, the Sandwich Lady had disappeared and was not seen again before we left). I found the selection of books to be much like I expected: some general fiction, every Stephen King and Dean Koontz book ever written, a romance section large enough to be broken into subsections like "Harlequin" and "Bodice-rippers", a large sci-fi/fantasy section with a disturbingly high number of Star Trek and Star Wars books.

After Bearded Man completed his appraisal of the books, he selected a few that he wanted and separated them from the rest. The others, he said, were too common or in poor condition. I couldn't help but feel a little insulted that any of my books were in too poor of condition to be in this shop with boxes stacked to the ceiling, but I realized that it really didn't matter. He evaluated the books he had chosen (there were only a few...eight to ten at most) and offered me fifteen dollars. I was pleased for several reasons. First, I would have gladly taken fifteen dollars for all of the books I brought in, just to get them out of the house. More importantly, I was pleased that by giving me cash rather than store credit, I didn't feel any obligation to come back to the urine-scented shop to utilize my credit on books I would eventually have to try to sell back to him. Finally, it made me realize how incredibly glad I am that we have a library that, if not spectacular, is at least decent.

If I can manage to curb my spending on books and just borrow from the library, maybe we can afford that mansion on the beach.

Until later...