I'm not sure if there's an event I love more than a used book sale.
Getting more books on the cheap is the main draw, obviously—but there's also the oddball browsing experience.
With no time to assert the order and coherence of a library or bookstore, the books at a used book sale are jumbled into big, loose categories—"history," "supernatural," "science," "how to."
And even these broad divisions have their issues—unknowing volunteer labor results in plenty of books being where you wouldn't expect. Fiction with biography, history with travel, science fiction with science.
Within these haphazard sections, there's no alphabetization either, which means that you have to pay attention as you're browsing.
There's no casual glancing over a section, because you never know what you might find in there. You don't need to bring that sustained attention to a bookstore or library.
The best part of all that effort is that you leave a used book store feeling exhausted with the weird and unfamiliar cognitive effort—and hopefully an armful of books.
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