Yesterday was the first day of the semiannual Friends of the Library used book sale, always held at the same building on the 400 block of North Main Street here in Gainesville. I made it down there early in the afternoon and browsed around...but not too much. I picked up a book for Melissa, found a couple of interesting jigsaw puzzles, and hung around the foreign language section...totally ignoring the vast amount of fiction for sale. I bought a compact Chinese-English dual-translation Bible with the text of both languages presented in simplified vocabulary...I have high hopes for it in my future studies. I found a very old Hindi primer that I plan to use to practice writing out sentences and get myself used to thinking within the flow of that beautiful language. And I made one more interesting find: a Turkish-English dual language reader, composed of several short stories...like the Bible, written in simple language...simple enough for me to pick out the Turkish words' meanings as well as the intricate grammatical constructions in that agglutinative language. All of the books I bought were dirt-cheap, from 50 cents to a dollar each, and were small and thus very portable. As for books of fiction...
I have been making extensive use of my local public library for reading fiction, generally eschewing purchasing books. I also have a very extensive collection at home of short stories that I really should be reading more of...that's why I've started "Short Story Wednesday" on this blog when I review and discuss the more interesting examples of this important and underappreciated type of literature. But I've gotten myself into the habit of going downtown to this book bazaar every six months and doubtless will be paying another visit in October. Besides books and puzzles they sell used magazines, vinyl phonograph records, CDs, cassettes, VHS, and DVDs. The sale will last through Wednesday, so there's plenty of time left for you to join in on the browsing...
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