Julie's Journal

You may remember me posting about all the books that I sell on Amazon last summer. I’ve done really good with that, but at some point it just gets to be a pain in the butt going down to the post office every.single.day to ship out all the books I sold the day before.

I still had about 300 books in boxes in the garage, and since we are unemployed (i.e. broke) we decided to have a book sale today. I posted it on Craigslist last night, and drove all over our neighborhood putting up signs. We got up this morning and spent about an hour putting them out on blankets in our driveway all nice and neat for the hundreds of people that would surely show up.

Just as the last box was unpacked a nice couple pulled up in their truck. The man asked Michael, “How much?” in which Michael responded, “$1.00.” He said, “No, for ALL of them!” I stood there thinking, what the hell, and Michael did the math in his head at lightening speed and came up with a price. They said, “SOLD, start packing them back up into boxes.”

I was floored, but gladly starting putting them back in the boxes, all the while thinking how I just freed up 6 hours of my Sunday. Hell, it took more time setting up for the book sale, than the whole sale lasted.

As we were packing up the books and talking to the couple, we learned that they own the big gymnastics academy here in town and they have girls that come and live with them from other countries to train for all the big gymnastics competitions. They were buying the books to create a library for the girls to learn English and the American culture! I was so moved by their story and I would have TOTALLY donated the books to them, had we not been so damn poor right now.

I do have their business card though, and I WILL be donating more books to them as I finish reading the ones I have. LOL! We got rid of over 300 books today, and we still have close to 1000 in our various book shelves around the house. I’m not sure how well all my Seth Godin and Christopher Moore books would go over with the young gymnasts but you never know. Then again those are books that I would never get rid of.

[tags]books, book sale, gymnastics, gymnasts, Seth Godin, Christopher Moore[/tags]