Seth Johnson
The Friends of the Library will open its door on Saturday and allow customers to peruse more than half a million items—from 25 cent books to one worth $900 along with artwork, music, movies, puzzles, games and a crocheted angel.
The sale starts Saturday and runs through Wednesday with price reductions on the final two days—half price on Tuesday and 10 cents per item on Wednesday. The sale will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and from noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday through Wednesday
The sale happens at the Friends of the Library Bookhouse (430 North Main Street) and contains niche alcoves including the Collector’s Corner, a room for games, a room for comics and manga, and a separate space for art.
Volunteer Joan Curl oversees the comic and manga section. When she took over in 2007, she said the genre remained relatively obscure. She visited bookstores to figure out how to value the donated items, but even these stores lacked a large amount of the genre. Now, she said manga has exploded in popularity, taking up whole sections.
This year’s art and architecture section contains a whole bookshelf dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright. Peter Prugh manages this section and said if Wright wrote it, then you can find it on the shelves—even in French.
The art section also sells prints, and Prugh also cuts out pictures from books beyond sellable value and old calendars.
He’s still getting used to the dedicated space now available for his section. In the past, the art section set up tents in the parking lot, taking down and setting the area back up each day. Prugh said that arrangement led to a mess if it started raining. Around three sales ago, the Friends of the Library bought the front section of its building, and the art section has had a home ever since.
Bags of used stamps and CDs of Louis Armstrong combine with old maps and books to populate the Collector’s Corner. These items don’t fall along the standard book rates. The special editions and rare volumes range from Nancy Drew mysteries to pop-up books and local yearbooks.
At this sale, the corner contains a signed, first edition of John Glenn’s memoir, a signed, first edition of David McCullough’s “Truman,” and a signed first separate edition copy of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings “Jacob’s Ladder” with a $900 price tag.
Other items include a 1929 copy of “The History of Alachua County Florida” by F.W. Buchholz, a signed, first edition of “Adventures in a Green World” by Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the first issue of Life Magazine from 1936 in three different sizes.
All profits from the sale go to the Alachua County Library District. The Friends of the Library will hold its fall book sale from Oct. 21-25.
