The Rotary Club of Oamaru’s annual Booakrama opened at 9 this morning.
For the past few weeks members and friends have been sorting books donated by the public.
It’s a fascinating exercise which shows there are a few too many people with a Presbyterian approach to books – they’ve been kept where they’ve got damp or just kept too long so they’re dirty and musty and have to be taken to the recycling centre or dumped.
However while there are lots of those there are many more good books which will be snapped up by people whose search for a bargain contributes to the club’s main fundraising effort.
How good a book is and what it’s worth exercises the sorters. Is a signed, first edition of a Wilbur Smith hard back a treasure or just another quick read? Are these old books precious or well past their read-by dates?
We usually take the approach that the books have been given to us to be sold and it’s better to price them low and miss the odd windfall profit than to price them too high and have them left on the tables.
Homepaddock 
Going through the personal side of this,Hp.
We are moving home after 47 years, and our book collection is too large to go with us.
Fortunately the local church is about to have its annual Book Fair.
But the decisions on what to keep and what to pass on are agonizing. Some books have been in the family since the 1800s!!!
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My sympathies Fred we had an extensive library in 1990 when a total loss house fire destroyed them all.
We now have a much more fleeting connection to books and enjoy an informal “swap” system that has evolved in the Motor Caravan Club but I am suspicious that dealers” might have hit on that as the quality has evaporated somewhat.
Sadly we are not still on the road Ele as a detour would have been very likely.
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My view about unwanted books is here:
Since then, I remembered when after my wife died in 2003 I moved to a refurbished cottage we had I had ambitions of keeping all our books we had because I loved the idea of a library ladder example here- although I much prefer the ones with the pointy top-cannot find an example
As for books you should keep, a starter might be:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1461876/The-bizarre-world-of-bonkers-book-collecting.html
(hat tip): http://quoteunquotenz.blogspot.co.nz/
P.S. HP – perhaps your farmer might like to gift you a library ladder for “Mothers Day’- or was MD last weekend?——-
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