library sale!

One of my favorite pastimes is poking through the tables at the library sale and coming home with stacks of books, books, books! This year I had someone to share the thrill with. My seven-year-old has been bemoaning the fact she doesn't have any "chapter books" of her own so I said come to the library sale and get some. I let her loose at the kid's table and she picked out twenty-five books.

Her stack includes some Littles books (new to her but I have fond memories of that series), a few Junie B. Jones, the entire Caroline Years (precedent to the Little House series, which we are still stuck in the middle of!), a few Magic Tree House books, a few Ramona books, a bunch of Fairy Chronicles, and some kind of graphic novel series about girls with magic powers over the elements. Plus a few other random things. I had to clear off a shelf of picture books from her room (saved in a box for when the baby gets older) so she'd have a place to keep her new reading material. Fun!

I only got a handful for myself.

None of these were actually on my list of books-I-must-have, of course. A few notes on them: 

Beach Music- years ago I read Prince of Tides and thought it fantastic. I've never read any Pat Conroy since, but when I'm in the mood for a nice long book this will be it.

William Golding- only ever read Lord of the Flies (loved it), and made an attempt at Pincher Martin (bleh). I was curious about these. There was a fourth one I left behind- about a man obsessed with building a huge spire on top of a church. Didn't sound interesting.

Zookeeper's Wife, Old School and Heart of a Shepherd all caught my eye because I've added them to my TBR list due to book bloggers. Better yet to have my own copy at hand!

How to Speak Dog- Even though I don't have a dog I always like books about animal communication.

Through Animal's Eyes- about a wildlife sanctuary. Another of my favorite types of books.

Garden Secrets- the publication date seems a little outdated, but this book promises to explain the reasons behind all those little garden rules you hear and put into practice without really knowing why. I'm eager to read it.

The bird book on top is a cute little thing full of interesting facts on birds, plus crosswords, other kinds of puzzles, brain teasers and jokes- all to do with birds. I'm not crazy about birds, but flipping through was intrigued by some of the facts in there so I wanted to read it. I probably won't do the puzzles so I can pass this on to a real bird-lover someday.

Got a few for the baby as well (they get a very thorough cleaning before going into her hands!)

We also got this really cute button book for her that had ten buttons on ribbons, each page having a round shape cut out of a picture that you could fit a button into, going from one to ten. Unfortunately the baby um, "lost her cookies" pretty badly all over that book and I've wiped it off with mild bleach but it still smells terrible. It's sitting out in the sunshine now but if that doesn't do the trick, the poor book is a goner. Too bad, it was really adorable!