Sunday, August 06, 2006

Silicon Valley Book Binge





It's been less than a week since we returned to the cool Bay of Monterey, and we had our first day of booksales. Saturnday morning we took off over the hill to San Jose. There were three sales we wanted to hit, and we got to them all in 3 hours. MLK library in San Jose was the first stop. the sale was outside on the patio, and was scheduled to start at 10 am. A patio sale means the books will be 'out' much sooner than 10, and the ability to browse and buy early is a halmark of these. Sure enough, at 9:30 we arrived and saw people walking away with books. Danm!, the tables were set and a handful of eager browsers milled about the tables. We filled 4 bags in 45 minutes, some nice history, tech, lit, Native American and randon fiction. The selection was not the best, due to the library's huge sale room inside the library, which was closed, but which appeared to get the nicer 50% of the donations and discards. Nevertheless, we were in California, and the quality of titles is so much better than the midwest, that the finds were nice additions to bring back to the rolling green hills oof home.

Next was a few miles away at the Tully library in San Jose. I had been here last month, and lost my prized coffe mug on a parkbench. The sale is small, and a first sunday of the month thing. Last month i had been there at 9:30 and got to pick through things a bit early. (another patio sale) The selection was poor, but someone who wanted a huge cach of Hmong and asian language books would have found this a blast. We do have a big Hmong population back home, but i didn't remember that till today. Found a great history of the HEroin trade and a Thomas altas of California. great tool for the month to come.

The third and final stop was in Morgan Hill, a fe miles south and forcing us to take the old watsonville rd. home over the hills. a pretty drive through vinyards and scorched yellow hills. The morgan hill sale was also a regular event. i had shown up last month on sunday, for the 5$/bag day and filled a back or two and was happy. This month the only notable finds were 3 auto repair manuals, and a nice hardcover copy of Mao TSE-Tung'on Guerrilla Warfare.

Life is good here on the Bay. We are going to put together some more auctions for Bob this week, and today we spend the day with EmmaBelle.