Every year in the Spring, the Friends of Otis Library hold a book sale in the basement of Otis Library downtown.
I absolutely love going. It doesn't matter that I haven't read most of the books I got last year, I want more. They hold a 3 day event finishing up on Sunday, which in my opinion is the best day to go.
When you walk in on Sunday, they hand you a plastic bag and you can buy as many books as will fit inside this bag for $4. What's not to love about that right?
Last year, I walked out with 12 books. This year my book haul was about the same, even picked up some German books for my mother.
But the Pièce de résistance was the vinyl records they had displayed on a center table. My father initially picked up 3 boxes (containing approx 5 records) of Beethoven from Deutsche Gramophone. I took a look at the table and was stupefied. Of all the albums that were on this table, how could he only pick up the 3 Beethovens?
Given the choice of only picking one, I had no idea which to pick. How do you choose between Haydn, Debussy, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Schumann, Chopin, Prokofiev, and Berlioz?
I made mention that if I had a way to carry them, I would take them all. But since we had walked from our house near Norwich Free Academy down to the library, that was not exactly a plausible act.
However, one of the women working the event overheard me and offered to hold them for to get my car. So we said heck yes!
She offered us the deal of a life time 28 Boxed Sets from Time Life and Deutsche Gramophone for $26.
Now my mother on the other hand was not as impressed with our purchase because she still doesn't really love the other 6-7,000 records my father has in our living room, even after 22 years. But who cares! We just made a fantastic deal and we were bringing those records into the house one way or another.
I can't wait to listen to some of them, but first my father needs to show me how to use his record player since I've never even touched it (in fear of some disaster)
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