Book Sale Craziness

I've just returned from our local library's semi-annual paperback booksale.  While it wasn't my first time participating in one of their book sale events, it was my first time participating in one as a homeschooler.  In the past, I have gone to these periodic book sales looking for math textbooks (study guides for myself), fiction books (for the kids to read on their own and for me to read aloud to them), and various non-fiction books to add to my collection.

Before I go further, I have to say that walking into a book sale for me is like a recovering alcoholic walking into a bar during happy hour.  While my analogy may be a bit exaggerated, I do love books and I may probably have in my genetic make-up the tendency to hoard and to HOARD BOOKS specifically.  Details won't be provided but needless to say, armed with this knowledge, I tread very cautiously into any used book sale of any sort.  More often than not, I come out empty-handed.

Today, I was proud of myself.  I spent a whopping $3.50 on books for my homeschooled kids - all but two* books were reading comprehension books which I knew was lacking in our curriculum this year.  Score!  So glad for those purchases.  I even picked up a copy of "Johnny Tremain" which we'll be reading much later when we get to American history.



Photo source:  TimeRecordNews/Newspapers in Education

Anyway, my browsing and shopping experience today opened my eyes a bit to those who are serious used book sale shoppers.  More specifically, homeschool shoppers.  I am embarrassed to be a part of the group of people known as "Homeschool Moms" because I saw one woman, whom I'm suspecting was a "Homeschool Mom" because she was looking for books very similar to mine.
As you can see from the photo, the books are arranged on tables and roughly sorted into big categories like fiction, non-fiction, romance (TONS of books in this section), oversized books, and children's.  The children's table had all fiction, non-fiction, readers, picture books and such smushed together so much patience was required to sift through the boxes of books.

Unlike the photo above, the book sale was quite crowded but I found a box of books on the children's table that no one was looking through.  I sandwiched myself between two people and started looking through the books.  As I finished one box, I made my way to the next box on my right.  Eventually the person on my left disappeared so it was this other woman and me going side-by-side down the table.  Eventually other people filled in on my left.  I didn't want to go against the flow so I continued down the table on my right.

As I sifted through a couple of boxes, I could see that boxes contained similar type books and there were boxes that I felt I didn't need to look through (picture books, Sweet Valley High romance teen books, early chapter readers, Star Wars movie books and so on).  I skipped over those boxes and ended to this woman's right.  There were several boxes between us so I didn't think anything of it as people where jumping in and out at various points.

What really surprised me was when this woman began looking in the SAME box as me and pulling books out as I'M TOUCHING THEM.  I don't know what books she wanted as she apparently wanted a whole lot of everything.  She had one of those collapsible crates on wheels and it was packed already.  She acted as if I was stealing books from her stash the way she was grabbing at the books out of the box I was looking in.  Yeeesh!  For some reason, I didn't think she was a teacher looking to restock her classroom books.  She struck me as a homeschooling mom and her rude attitude just rubbed me the wrong way.

Anyway, I quickly left the children's area entirely and began looking at non-fiction books.  While I love a great deal on books and I would love to cut expenses in this area, I hope I never become someone like this.  Wow.  I may have lost out on some great finds but heck, if I have to be rude like this woman was, it's not worth it to me.  Well, I hope she found what she was looking for and is content with what she has.

I'm excited for my finds and hope the kids have fun reading and learning about all the different topics.  And yeah, I have to learn to not take things so personally.  Even though this other woman was Asian.  And looked just like me.


*Okay, in the spirit of full-disclosure, the other non-reading comprehension book was a "Calvin and Hobbes" comic book which Air Boss loves to read . . . and me, too!