literary diversion

I like to keep a book handy to read. Any ol’ book will do. I only had a dozen left to read the last day of the used book sale at Magale Library at Southern Arkansas University. I filled a couple of grocery sacks with books, including an in-depth study of the physiology of fish reproduction. I thought someone might want it. At home, I shoved aside the stacks of books in the linen closet to make room for my latest finds.
I was too late to buy anything except textbooks at the SouthArk book sale. So I made sure I got to Barton Library’s book sale at the mall soon after they opened. I found a couple dozen other books for the closet. As I thrust them in. I vowed to sort through and straighten up the mess – as soon as I got back from checking out the weekend garage sales for books and dropped off a dessert at church.
The problem with garage sales is that they tend to have stacks and stacks of formulaic romance novels and nothing on the physiology of fish reproduction. I did find a couple of children’s books I hadn’t read though.
My dessert made it to the church kitchen, but I did not make it hope in time to sort books. I was too busy sorting through our church library’s discards. The Christian Education director had decided to get rid of them at a dime apiece.
Replacing our lost copy of the Egermeier’s Bible story book for a dime was a steal. I stocked up on the old devotionals and Christian biographies that one of my sons had requested and left with 50 books. Those went on the floor in the bedroom with the bookshelves my husband built.
Sunday morning the rest of the left-over books at church were re-labeled, “Free, help yourself.” I added 30 to our overflowing pile.
I didn’t bother to shelve anything. My son would do that when he came home from college in a couple of weeks. I knew he was bringing more to add to his books heaped in the bedroom closet. (Was it only two years ago when he called from college to proudly announce, “I have seven feet of books.” They now stretch out 37 feet.)
The weekend the bibliophile returned from college, we spent a half-hour of quality time in front of the free books in the church in deep conversation.
“You gotta read this one. That is a good author, take it.”
Staggering in with our load of books, we decide it was time to sort books, organize shelves and eliminate a few.
He was overwhelmed with the number of the biographies I had found. I sadly agreed it was time to kick out the Hardy Boys. For a week he hid in the bedroom sorting books by topics and authors, discarding ones he did not want and some I did want.
He helped himself to any book he wanted from my shelves. I started to protest until I realized he had to dust them and I could borrow them back.
In the end, two boxes of books made it to the garage. They held our Hardy Boys mysteries, the overflow of biographies and the book on the physiology of fish reproduction. For some reason no wanted to read it.


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