On A Freakingly Epic Book Sale

Imagine this, you walk into a book sale, see so many unfamiliar authors’ life’s works around, so many people around so many tables choosing the next books on their ‘to-read’ list, so many bored people who just came to accompany their bookish friends to a book sale – sitting in a corner when their friends abandoned them temporarily because they were lost in the book world, what do you do?

I’d freak out.

And that’s exactly what I did.

So many books. I thought nobody read books these days instead binged on movies made on so-called ‘worthy’ books.

I was wrong. And I was happy I was wrong.

Only, more readers meant, even though those people had a hall full of tables on which books were kept, they couldn’t keep up with the pace while refilling – the books kept going that fast.

And, I did forget to mention that it wasn’t an ordinary book sale having a few percent discount on select genres or authors, it was legit a ‘book hoarder’s sale.’

Honestly, I love the idea. You buy a box of say a given amount and stuff as many books as you can in that box – I repeat, as many as you can. I mean, how can you possible want anything more when pretty much everything around you is on sale? And there was such an extensive variety of genres, I felt bad for not being able to, even briefly, go through the summaries of those books on their backside or even their titles. I mean, any author who managed to make it on print deserves a great deal of recognition.

Everywhere you’d see, there’s books, there’s people who read them, there are people who like the book world too, just like you. And then there’s this compelling, extremely pleasing feeling of holding books in your hands – new or pre owned, doesn’t matter, the words in them do.

The main reason probably, that I ended up freaking out was the fact that – so many books, so less time. It might sound exaggerating but going through those books spines, looking for a familiar name, author or cover, the possibility was I didn’t even know the name of the half the author’s books there.

And that there were so many wonderful books – few of which I got - about which I hadn’t known before.

On entering, I saw so many books and started worrying how many of these I would end up buying. One round of the room and my worry shifted to whether I will be able to find a few good books that I’ve heard of. Three or four rounds around the place and my box was overflowing with books I’m proud I got.

Metaphorically speaking, it was candyland.