This Saturday Abby, Kellen, Anna Beth, P.J., and I went to The Really Good, Really Big, Really Cheap Book Sale. For a couple weeks leading up to the sale, we joked about what we would do to beat each other best books. But on the actual day of the sale, we banded together. We even shared books amicably, though Kellen and I did pretend to quarrel over Theodore Rex, much to the embarrassment of our fiancees.

According to the Greenville Literacy Association, the sale featured some one hundred thousand books. Many of them were romance novels and self-help books, but among the rest we each found some good deals. For the price of one hardback and one paperback book, I acquired the following:

  • Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
  • Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly
  • Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan
  • Plutarch’s Lives
  • Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America and Errand into the Wilderness
  • Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty
  • David MacCullough, Truman
  • Six or seven John Steinbeck novels, including mint copies of East of Eden and Of Mice and Men
  • Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
  • Several miscellaneous history books
  • Quite a few miscellaneous classics, including Moby Dick, Tom Jones, Bleak House, A Farewell to Arms, and Gulag Archipelago
  • A couple miscellaneous novels

The others found their own treasures as well. P.J., who bought by far the most books, got the library of Russian literature that he has always wanted. Kellen walked away with a select works of philosophy and literary criticism and, inexplicably, with four copies of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Abby and Anna Beth both bought works of literature and cookbooks.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad morning’s work.