Books, Books...Everywhere!!

On Saturday I was given the opportunity of a lifetime. My best friend Brandon and his fiancee's family wanted to go to a publisher book sale (all overstock books just $1). It was a sale that couldn't be beat...if you are into that kind of thing. It was such a sale I had no idea what I was getting myself into by agreeing to go along.

We left Greenfield at 6:00am for the book sale in Lebanon, it doesn't "open" to the public until 9:00am, but people actually camp out for this thing so we had to get there early for a great place in line. The weather was HOT and HUMID, not making the warehouse we stood in line at any cooler. I was sweating and miserable by 8:30 and we didn't get to the front of the line to look through the books until 10:00.

Below you will see a picture of the warehouse with their huge inventory of books in the background and the line wrapping through the warehouse. I would estimate they had around 2-3 thousand people at the event in total. As you can see the woman in the picture below is just flat out exhausted from the book scramble.

Ok...so let me explain how this thing works. You wait in line for an hour to be given a box that you write your name on, then you go "book digging". They have pallets of huge boxes of books in no particular order. There is no order to this thing, just total chaos...a free for all. I would describe it as a Walmart's $5 bin on crack cocaine. People dig through all the pallets and fill dozens of boxes of random books then drag them to the sides and "sort" through them. This sorting can take hours I found out. The people we went with are die-hard about this sale. They gave me a book sale education.

The below picture is hard to see, taken on my cellphone, but it is of the free for all book digging. People get creative with their techniques and down right mean about their stacks of books. Some people bought whole pallets of books and others only a few. I felt completely out of place because I only wanted to buy like 5 books and everyone else I was with had 70. I ended the day with a grand total of 18 books in my box for purchasing...most of which were future presents for family.

I have tried to describe this day, but the words to describe it are not there...this book sale was in one word...WOW!!! I mean you just need to see it to fully understand. I am glad I went to this once in my life, but I will NEVER go back. I am still recovering for the chaos. So if any of you receive a book from me in the near future...you now where it came from.