The Central Arkansas Library System held their last used book sale of the year last week. In total, over 400 people showed up to buy books for a dollar each.
Veterans of the CALS Used Book Sale know: to get the best books — the popular thrillers, the best in romance — you've got to get there early, maybe even three hours early.
“Within about ten minutes all the popular books everyone is coming for is gone,” shopper Jessica Fitters said. “If you're first you get a few seconds of looking.”
Fitter’s got the coveted space at the front of the line. Jessica has a list. When the doors open, she wants to fill her bag with bestsellers by Lisa Jewell, Riley Sanger and Jeneva Rose.
Jessica sits with her three friends in bright lawn chairs. They've been parked in front of the glass doors since 11 a.m., and remember, this thing doesn't start until 2 — and it's 90 degrees outside.
Her fellow bibliophile, Nicole Otisi, is ready for the doors to open.
“We just wanted to get here to find the best books,” she said.
The friends look like tailgaters at a football game: shaded by umbrellas, holding personal fans, and drinking from sweating water bottles in the bright sun.
The rest of the line snakes across the green lawn and around the parking lot. It's like a warmer, happier version of the line at the DMV.
Come now: book collectors, stay at home moms, homeschool families, teachers, and the retired. All these pockets of readers waiting inside the line with a different goal.
Kris Alexander is a preschool director. She's got a canvas wagon to fill with books for her kids: Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, maybe something by Chris Van Alsburg.
“I like picture books especially,” she said. “I think picture books can help talk to young children about difficult topics, whether it's death or social issues.
Last time Susan MusCurtolla was here, she got 100 books.
“Last time I was here, which was 3 months ago, I got a full set of Dickens leather bound red leather, never used, gold leaf, gorgeous, for ten percent of what they go for Abebooks. So, it was fabulous.”
Abebooks is a popular site for book collectors. Susan is building a personal library and promises it's going to be “huge.”
It's one minute out. The friends have gotten out of their lawn chairs, waiting for the doors to open.
As the clock counts down, there is screaming. And then, it's a mad dash.
People swarm general fiction. Mothers bring kids to the children's section, to stock up.
Religious reference books: not a lot of people in that section yet.
Five copies of The Da Vinci Code, along with a stack of Where the Crawdads Sing, stayed unsold for at least the first hour of the sale.
In true crime, there's an unclaimed copy of Bad Blood by John Carreyrou. It would be a shame if that one went unpurchased.
One shelf is for donated class sets. So, it's crowded with high school reading material: a dozen copies of Lord of The Flies, nine copies of A Separate Piece, a few To Kill a Mockingbird’s, and a half-shelf with nothing, but copies of October Sky.
The combined horror-fantasy-science fiction section usually looks like a Walmart on Black Friday.
You want a Stephen King novel? Forget it, they're already gone.
“She got the last one,” said Amanda, the volunteer. “We only had two.”
Amanda is the Gandalf of the fantasy section. Working among piles of books is, she says, “utopian.”
Amanda remembers the woman she inherited the job from.
“She turned 80 while she was doing this,” Amanda said. “She's unfortunately passed on.”
David Self says the New Age section is actually a good place to find books on archaeology.
He is considering “Magical Uses for Magnets.”
Is this flimsy paperback science or a practical joke?
Susan, the woman who is building a “huge” personal library, filled a box within minutes.
“I've got The Hornblower Companion, which is awesome” she said.
At the counter, a CALS employee is knitting and waiting.
Hannah Saulters is working on the second of two socks. In a minute, she will have a lot of checking-out to do.
“Usually, the first ten or twenty minutes people are really just shopping,” she said. “And then we are constantly checking people out for the next few hours.”
The library won't have another used book sale for almost a year. So, there's finality to all the shopping– a sweet “get the cheap books while they're hot” madness, as patrons search to find another orphan.
People say they'll be back next year, ready to wait in line.
So, despite nationwide declines in literacy, there's a group that thinks both reading and finding books is an adventure.
