The most quintessentially fall event happened today. The annual library book sale.
It is always cold on the day of the book sale. The people browsing wear jackets and hoodies. Bundled up against the cool air outside. The air drifts in every time the door opens, which is often. People come in and out with the regularity of clockwork.
Some people are there to find a specific book. They hunt through piles and boxes in silence. Their eyes never lift from the book titles. Every now and then they shift as people pass them, but otherwise it is as if the rest of us don’t exist. Most of them leave disappointed, resolved to look somewhere else. Occasionally, the soft ‘hm’ of a successful hunter can be heard. They pocket the book and leave as silently as they came.
Some people are there to browse, friends and family at their side. The air is filled with their chatter to the people beside them. This is not a hunt, it is an event. They are here to spend time with friends, to see the people also at the book sale, to run into old acquaintances and make new ones. Every table, every genre, is browsed to prolong the conversation. They leave with a couple of books tucked under the arms and a smile on their face.
Some people come prepared. They bring bags and boxes in preparation for winter. These gatherers are here to stock up on books before the frost hits. The long evenings of winter are just around the corner, they need to get books now, before it is too late. They gather at one or two tables and genres. From long years of reading they know what they like and what they don’t, and rarely will they stray from that. Book after book get swallowed up by their bag, entire boxes become emptied by these book inhalers. These are the people who the people in charge of the book sale adore. They offer help carrying, extra bags and boxes, anything to enable them to buy more books.
Book sales bring these varied readers and people together in one place. A slice of life all in one room. From young mothers with babies on their hips to retired men with gray hair, the room holds them all. Books welcome them all.
I, I came to see everything.
Shaina Merrick
The Beauty of a Story 