Don't you just love a good book sale?

[LightShinesInTheDarkness]

Just been to a charity one in the village hall and picked up loads for 30p each - 'Land Girls', 'Fortunes Rocks', 'The Reader', 'A History of Tractors in Ukraine', 'The Remains of the Day', 'A Gathering Light' plus a few for the DCs - 'Stormbreaker', 'I am David'

Feeling well chuffed!!

oooh keep away from haye-on-wye - tis one giant booksale.

i came away floating on a happy cloud

Sounds a good haul.

I thought the Tractors in Ukraine book was a festering pile of shite and gave up with it after 30 pages. Wish I'd got it for 30p!

i liked tractors! though was a bit odd and took a bit of getting into, granted.

i am david is fab, wish i had nicked it from the skool library as have only ever seen it there

UnquietD - Funny you say that about the Tractors book - I have just put the new one away and discovered I already had one, which I have never opened!

Mayor - is Hay cheap 2nd hand books, or more like collectors items?

both. yoou have to be a bit discerning i think but on the whole can get great bargains if that is what you want. only been there the once last year...am tempted to make a pilgrimage every year...sigh...

I can't walk past the local Oxfam without a book binge. The stuff people chuck - I don't know how they can bear to part with it.

Tractors is great - I loved it. "Festering pile of shite" my arse.

Just signed up for the Hay Newsletter, never been before but liking the look of it..

I actually find our local Oxfam quite expensive for 2nd-hand books.

I know £2 for a paperback is not much, and its for a good cause, but with WH Smith, Waterstones etc doing such good offers, you can often only pay £3.50 for a brand new book.

Interesting diametrically opposed views on the 'Tractors'

i live in a town with a multitude of charity shops...a round of them can take all morning and i "treat" myself to a good rummage once a month

highly recommend hay for a weekend away, it actually tiddled it down with rain but was sol lovely to just wander round bookshop after bookshop with dh, pausing only for coffee and cakes

depends on the charity shop as to the high prices...usually can get childrens books for 50p or less though

LightShines, our Oxfam bookshop's standard pb price is more like 3 quid, which irritates me when the four other charity shops on the same street sell them for £1 or £2 each - and often have multi-buy offers too.

I try to look on it as a charitable donation with a free book thrown in (but don't tend to go into Oxfam all that much, even though their range is much better).

A good book sale is a lovely thing. I just got 5 books for £1.50 from our library sale yesterday (even though library sales always sadden me when I see the things people don't want to read any more).

I'm addicted to the local warehouse sale too. Lovely new books that I actually want to read for a quid each. fatal.

There's a charity shop near me that usually has so many books that they do then 4 for £1. That's bril!
Some charity shops charge waaaay too much for their books.

We have a fantastic charity bookshop just down the road from us, it is great. I have got some great new books from there as well as some classics. They have a brilliant children's section too, we go in there about once a week.

It's better to use the library to borrow novels (by contemporary novelists, at least)at least the author will get about 5p or 6p a borrow from you. Otherwise they earn not one penny for these secondhand book purchasesnot a problem if you're picking up Agatha Christies, but it would be for a new novelist.

The average fiction writer earns about £5000 a year from their published work so every penny helps.

abraid, I do my bit for the library too, believe me - the last three books I've requested have been bought new for library stock! Right now I have 7 checked out.

I love my library. They were selling some books yesterday for 5p AND it was buy one get one free!

Didn't buy any but had a fun 10 minutes browsing

I confess to never using the library.

I like to own the books, esp. if its something I think I may read again. If not, I recycle via the charity shop.

I also bought and never read the Tractors book twice

So what would happen to all the second hand books out there if everyone used the library exclusively?

I wasn't all that keen on Tractors either, thought it wasn't all that funny and there were overtone of elder abuse at times.

agree tractors overhyped mawkish rubbish. also got stuck after 30 pages.

i use the library a lot and try not to buy (any more) books but cannot resist a second hand bookshop. there was a wonderful one in chichester when i was a child, i used to spend hours there.

I use the library a lot more as well, especially for the dcs. There's a great charity shop where I live that has loads of books for around 50p-£1. I agree the Oxfam ones tend to be quite expensive in comparison.

Haven't tried Tractors, it never appealed to me, doesn't seem like I missed out though!

Oh, I agree that it would be a terrible waste to get rid of secondhand books rather than have someone read them. I just don't think that the economics of how authors make money are always widely appreciated, especially that the WONDERFUL PLR system rewards them every time someone checks out one of their books.

So go on--earn a new author 5p by checking out one of their books from the library. You don't even need to read it.

I like book stalls at village/school fetes best - standard pricing round here seems to be 25p each or 5 for £1 - I can walk away with 5 books I would never have bought full price and I can let the DC loose - some of DD's favourites have come from such sales.

Roll on the fete season

I agree abraid, TBH I had no idea that the system worked that way.