April 10, 2008
Big Seattle Book Sale This Weekend

This Friday, 6:30-9:00 PM, if you are a member of the sponsoring organization, Friends of the Seattle Public Library.   (You can join at the door.)  Otherwise, this Saturday, 9-5, and this Sunday, 11-4.  Where?   Building #30 at Warren G. Magnuson Park, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E.  I'll be there at least one of the days, probably Sunday when all the prices are cut in half.

For a description of last September's sale, see this post.

Posted by Jim Miller at April 10, 2008 04:55 PM | Email This
Comments
1. I clicked through to some of your other post/thoughts. I was particularly interested in your highlighting of Obama's claim that "nobody has been more outspoken on anti-semitism" than he has. Hadn't heard that one yet.

Oh really, Barrack? If you were so anti-antisemitism then you wouldn't belong to the church you belong to. It just doesn't add up at all. Obama's words are completely shot down by his own attendance at a church that gave Louis Farrakhan an award and supports Hamas.

I only hope that more Americans see through this (and about 25 other seriously disturbing things I see in Obama).

Posted by: Michele on April 10, 2008 05:37 PM
2. Aww too bad I'll be away and have to miss it.

Of course, to attend I'd actaully have to come to Seattle, which I'm loathe to do. I avoid it at all costs: I despise the traffic, I refuse to reward punishing taxation and bad government by spending there and I get my fill of moonbat-ery right here at SP.

I guess I'll have to wait for a local KCLS sale or run down to Powells.

Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on April 10, 2008 06:33 PM
3. Ragnar - I don't know which direction you would come from, but I have never had any problems with traffic, when going to the book sale. Remember that the sale is on a weekend and about as far from down town as you can get and still be in Seattle. (You may have to walk a bit from where you park your car, if you don't get there early.)

(For the curious: I take the 520 bridge, then cut through the UW to Sand Point. And, sometimes just for variety, I come back around the top end of Lake Washington.)

Posted by: Jim Miller on April 10, 2008 06:44 PM
4. I purposely don't shop or buy anything in Seattle. There is nothing in Seattle worth spending a cent for Greg Nichols on.

I used to like the town, back when it was a place of interest, it has become a playgound for idiots in the past 4 to 8 years.

I don't miss it at all.

Posted by: GS on April 10, 2008 06:51 PM
5. Saying hello: Library note: In over 40 years I have collected virtually everything worth gettig on ancient history, 19th C Am lit Thoreau, Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, Emerson, Twain etc, lit crit Chaucer thru moderns (w/special emphasis on Irish & Russian lit), rhododendrons, camellias, sports (guns, baseball), iris, roses, orchids (basically anything from Timber Press), all Ratzinger etc cath books + 50 Jesuits (I have degrees from Seattle Prep 74, SU 80 & Gonzaga law 83 - Spitzer is way cool), orthodox Judaism/Old T commentary/exegisis, nature/gardening, NW history, chess (everyone: if they're living US GMs I've played them/support them), wine (between SU and law school I was the wine steward at a high-end steakhouse on Aurora Ave N - Canlis, today focus mostly on Walla Walla/Red Mountain reds), food/cooking, martial arts (esp Okinawan goju-ryu), travel, language (principally English, Latin, German, Italian), natural hist, native Am (OK U rocks - phenomenal native am books, like 43 in the series), NW history, coins (US, ancient Greek/Roman, Britsh isles before Cromwell, well actually thru James II gun money). politics/pol sci, some econ (Austrian school eg von Mises), some astro/physics, medical. around 4000 hardbacks total (if it's worth getting its worth getting worth getting in HB). anyway saying hello. always interested in books, nature, Republicans. btw Horizon on Cap hill is good. also btw my brother is a VP at Amazon - they sell books too, Ciao. Casey

Posted by: Casey Collins on April 10, 2008 10:07 PM
6. Thanks Jim, it's more about boycotting Seattle than fighting her traffic. I'm firmly in camp with GS in that regard. Besides, I'm flying out tomorrow, so it's really a moot point anyway.

Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on April 10, 2008 11:55 PM
7. Well, I'm going to insert a harrumph here. I live in the perhaps most cloistered part of Bellevue, and I like to come to Seattle. As much because of its silliness, as in spite of it.

Posted by: Jay on April 11, 2008 05:17 AM
8. I have an aversion to used books. Call it elitist or a phobia, but I like breaking the spine in myself.

...or perhaps it may stem from watching this Seinfeld episode with George and a library book.

Posted by: Rick D. on April 11, 2008 06:07 AM
9. Rick D, I now call you Rich, not Rick.

Posted by: swatter on April 11, 2008 07:24 AM
10. Philip Terzian wrote a nice piece (Casual column, 03/31/08) in the Weekly Standard a couple of weeks back about collecting secondhand books and browsing old bookstores. I suspect Jim and others who frequent the big local book sales would enjoy the article.

NOTE: I think you need to be a Weekly Standard subscriber to access the article. And if you are not, you should be!


Posted by: Brian White on April 11, 2008 08:38 AM
11. Thanks Jim, it's more about boycotting Seattle than fighting her traffic.

I'm sure there are thousands of other people who will offset your boycott. Traffic is seems to run quite smoothly around Magnuson Park.

Besides, I'm flying out tomorrow, so it's really a moot point anyway.

The FAA may decide they need to inspect/fix your plane. =P

Posted by: Cato on April 11, 2008 09:41 AM
12. For those of you that attend these events, I'm curious as to the demographic that attends these second-hand book sales in Seattle.

Are there teens and 20-somethings there, or is it mainly older people (and much younger with parents in tow)?

Posted by: Smoley on April 11, 2008 02:13 PM
13. Smoley - If you click on that last link in the post, you'll see a picture of the crowd from last September.

(The mix shown in the picture isn't quite typical. Since people are understandably sensitive about pictures of their children, I picked a picture with no identifiable kids in it to illustrate the post. In general, the sales seem to draw more people who are on tight budgets, young families, college students, and the retired. As well, of course, as all those book scouts.)

Posted by: Jim Miller on April 11, 2008 03:51 PM
14. Did clean-up duty following a Magnuson Park library-book sale, and here's what cleaning up was all about: dumping thousands and tens of thousands of unsold books into pallet boxes for shipment to the knackers. A whole damned airplane-hanger bale of books turned into slime. Books paid for, once upon a time, by taxpayers.

Slime's more cost effective than words and ideas, but still ... Liberia (lingua franca = English) could use and would read every unpulped word.

Money's no object to SPL's Deborah Jacobs, who built a kool $170 million monument to herself with your money, so tell her to be a real friend of the library by expending a few spare thousands of dollars to send tens of thousands of books to a place where they'll do some good.

Then tell her that the edifice complex is a curable disease.

Posted by: Pulped Fiction & Non-Fiction on April 13, 2008 05:05 PM
15. better an edifice complex than an Oedipus complex I reckon.

Posted by: Rick D. on April 13, 2008 05:13 PM
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