Sept. 19 - Mary Cheney Library Sale (Manchester)

Got to the sale at Mary Cheney Library at around quarter to ten. Parking at this library is challenging in general--Manchester is my former town, and people were talking about needing a larger library building and more parking before I left five years ago. I'm fond of the building and might be sad to see it go, but the parking is definitely a need. I should have known better to even try driving through the little lot in front of the building, but I did. No spaces there, of course (although there was, front and center, a car with "Just Married" on its rear window. Now that's dedication!). There's a small public parking lot behind Paul's Paint, across the street, which is where I generally park for this sale, and that's where I ended up today. (Make sure you park in the public lot--NOT directly in the small lot behind Paul's, which belongs to him.)

If you want to go to this sale, don't go in the main doors to the library--go in around the side. The sale usually takes up the better part of the large meeting room under the children's section.

I mentioned earlier that I'd wanted to find out if the great CD selection at this library's May sale was just a fluke. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the case. Today--still several boxes of CDs, but a mighty lot of them were CDs that I saw at the last sale. As it was, I picked up two CDs that I'd waffled on the last time, but that was it--didn't seem to be many significant additions. This sale usually has a lot of videotapes and few DVDs.

Children's books were spread out in a large pile on the floor. Again, props for the accessibility to small children, but on occasion that made me wince (small children were walking on them!). Moreover, the lack of boxes made it very difficult to browse in any systematic or tidy way, and my knees couldn't take it for very long. As I've been sorting and shelving last week's haul, I realized again how extraordinarily clean the Simsbury books were--this bunch was not comparable. Lots of library discards, and a lot of other donated books in ratty condition. I ended up with 12 to 15 children's books. I suspect this was like my experience at Glastonbury last week--this library also had a sale in May, at which I bought a whole lot more, and just hadn't hadn't had time to refuel to full capacity.

This sale has a lot of older books and library discards as far as adult fiction goes also. This library was far lighter on the chick lit than the others I've seen lately, for some reason, and not much in the way of Oprah books (not necessarily a bad thing!). Nonfiction in this one is definitely on the lighter side--maybe two tables total, as opposed to three (?) tables of fiction and the mass-market paperbacks laid out on the floor around the room's far wall.

For some reason, this sale opts for a group of young guys (library pages?) to hang out on the sidelines of the sale and fill out forms to carry over to the cashiers' table. This wouldn't be a bad system if it weren't for the fact that there are no tables to unload your bags on--dumping on the floor is kind of awkward. Prices are pretty cheap--kids' books are a quarter, hardbacks and trade paperbacks are a buck and so are CDs. A sign hung from the ceiling behind the cashiers' table that said that the Friends of the Library didn't want to take checks for less than $25 and that ID was needed to write a check. I was, in fact, buying less than $25 worth of stuff, but I didn't say anything about the sign and the cashiers didn't make any objection to my check (a lucky thing, since I didn't have cash). I did, however, have ID (a lesson I've learned in the past--previously, I didn't bring my wallet in with my checkbook because I didn't want to carry it around; at some libraries, this is OK, but at some you get the fish-eye if you try to write a check without your driver's license).

All told, good but not great.

Best Finds: Nice hardback copy of Steve Almond's The Evil B.B. Chow & Other Stories (I'm almost surprised it wasn't signed; Hartford loves Steve Almond and he's been here several times). A collection of pasta recipes, always a great need for my family.