I went to our main library sale last week and came back with two bags full of books + I left a monetary donation. (Normally my monetary donation consists of overdue fines but I have reformed this year.)
The funniest title I picked up was "The Divine Husband" and that had the cashier laughing, too. On the back of the novel it says that it is "the Great Novel of the Americas." I've never heard of it.
I bought an ancient hardcover copy of The King's General, copyright 1946. It still has the paper cover though that is tattered.
As a teenager I hated Silas Marner but when I reread it a few years ago, I changed my mind. So I bought a hardcover containing three of Eliot's novels. I'll have to find room on the shelves for The Crystal Gave , Sophie's Choice, Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, and Gone With the Wind.
Oddly enough, I've read almost all of these books but liked them enough to want to reread them. Even more oddly enough, I've probably owned these books and at one point given them away. So I might even be buying back my own books. :-) Old friends are always welcome.

I just looked up the first review at Amazon on The Divine Husband - "The writing is absolutely vivid and beautiful, wonderfully researched and full of quirky characters and dashes of magical realism, such a nuns who can bi-locate and be in two places at once. "

uh, oh.

Bi-locating nuns. Well, this book is going to be recycled quickly.

a nearby library is having its annual book sale and so far I have been twice....one interesting book is about the woman who mapped London for the A-Z. Looked intriguing. Today is the last day and is a bag sale and I am debating if I should just go and wipe out the paperback Agatha Christie section. In a fit of neatness a few years back I got rid of all my ACs because my library has them all in regular and large print but I kinda miss having them.

As far as recommendations go....looks good--Buy It!! At those prices you can't go wrong.

They've had a sale here for decades called VNS (used to be visiting nurse service, now Im not sure) It was held at the state fair grounds. My dad and I used to get in line early and leave a few hours later with tons of cheap reads. Hadn't gone there in a while, so went with a friend. Bah - took two (count them) two hours to get in, most of the stuff was popular fiction. The buyers already had gotten in to pick up the rare and unusaul. We got a few books, but left disappointd. Not going there again.

The Phoenix library has a warehouse for all of the discards. Every few months they open it up for a huge sale - love those. Closer to me is our community library. While their sales aren't as big as the one in Phoenix, I've been pleasantly surprised by the types of books they have.

Buy the Weir. It's not as good as the Carolly Erickson bio, but it's good.
I know what you mean about sheer magnitude-our county library sale is held in a roller skating rink and that thing is FILLED with tables of books. So each time I go I pick a few authors I am going to look for, and start that way. If my eye is caught by a interesting cover or title, I look...but the discipline of looking for the authors keeps me from being overwhelmed. I know I pass over some gems-but I don't know what they are, and so, never don't feel the loss. There are plenty of good books to read out there.

Went back for the "bag sale" and got two bags full. Someone else must have been waiting out the Agatha Christies and the Star Treks because there was not one in sight. I would say overall they must have sold about 3/4 of the books they had based on my eyeball assessment of going the second day and the last day.

In the UK the sales held at the library are of either their unpopular books that have been sitting on the shelves for ages with no takers, or popular books that have all but fallen to pieces. I would need to be really desparate for a particular book to buy one there . . . although they are cheap.
In the US are all the books you buy at such sales straight from the lending shelves?

Many are. Many are donated books that the library doesn't want to shelve because of the expense of preparing them for circulation or because it already has a copy.

Veer,

We solicit books from people in town, so although there are some books from the library, most are donated. We are lucky that we live in a suburb of Boston, and we have many academics and lots of readers in our town, and we always get a great number and variety of donations. We sort through the books and only put out ones in decent shape. The sale is held for one weekend and many of the townspeople look forward to it every year. We do a brisk business. We get some dealers in, but even after they've been through there are plenty of great books left.

The sale is at the library, but it is organized and run by the Friends of the Library and not by the library itself. We have lots of volunteers and the library staff is not really involved. They are busy enough as it is. I think this is part of what makes it successful.

Last year, the book sale brought in over $10,000.

Ours is also run by the Friends and is stocked with donations, with a few deaccessioned books thrown in. They collect books from all over the county all year, store them in a donated barn, sort each week, put the really great ones on-line, and bring in close to $100,000 a year. I donate any hardbacks I don't want to the library-my paperbacks go onto Paperbackswap for a few months, then they go to the library too.

We are just a little town, I can't imagine having to run a sale that big. Each town has its own sale and generally they don't overlap. Though the libraries are networked, each little town is responsible for its own library. All in all, it's a good chunk of money for each library.

Same here - The VNS takes in donations all year long, as do the Friends. The ones that come from the library itself are the discards.

cjoseph and merry, thanks for the information. As I mentioned on another 'library' thread a little while ago libraries in the UK are run by the County/City/Town Councils using paid staff . . . although there may be only one trained librarian . . . with little, if any, input from volunteers.

Thanks for all your responses and here's an update. The book sale was a great success and we took in significantly more than last year. I bought lots of books for my children and here's what I found for myself:

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

History of the English Speaking Peoples (whole set) by Winston Churchill

Life of Elizabeth I by Alsion Weir

The Essential Gesture by Nadine Gordimer

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

When You Lunch with the Emperor by Ludwig Bemelmans of Madeline fame

The Gourmet Cookbook by Ruth Reichel

Complete Book of Breads by Bernard Clayton

Weird New England by Joseph A. Citro (my son and I had a grand time before Halloween reading this together)

As for the children's books, I was most pleased with finding both hardback Christopher Paolini books and the Scribner Anthology for Young People. Also found a couple "You Were There.." histories that I remember reading as a kid.

Now my problem is where to put all the books and what to read first.

>When You Lunch with the Emperor by Ludwig Bemelmans of Madeline fame

I had no idea he wrote books for adults till I went to a library sale several years back and bought Are you Hungry Are you Cold?, and The Street Where the Heart Lies. Both quite wonderful. I'll have to check that title out as well.