TTT: Outrageous/Crazy/Uncharacteristic Things I’ve Done for the Love of Books

Top Ten Tuesday: Outrageous/Crazy/Uncharacteristic Things I’ve Done for the Love of Books

1. I went to the exhibition portion of the ALA mid-winter meeting when it was in Seattle a few years ago. I filled three heavy bags with ARC books. I carried them around for hours 'till I thought my arms would fall off as the bags got fuller and fuller. I ended up giving most of them away to students as prizes and promotions, so it was worth it.

2. When my children were young, we went to Borders Books (sniff) for the midnight sale of one of the Harry Potter books. It started out fun and then just got tedious. I decided for the next book we'd just order a copy to arrive the first day, not wait up half the night to get it and then be too tired to read it immediately.

3. I attended a launch party for WINTER by Marissa Meyer, me and about five hundred other girls dressed in ball gowns. It was such a smash, I couldn't even make my way to the book table to buy a copy of the book. I did have fun watching her presentation. Ms. Meyer is very imaginative.

4. While on vacation, I visited a used book store in Lincoln City, Oregon. While there I explored all the nooks and crannies of the store and spent over $100 on used books. Most people build sand castles, fly kites, or collect shells. Me? I buy books on vacation.

5. On a similar vein, I visited the famous Powell's book store in downtown Portland one time after we rode the train down from Tacoma for a jazz festival. I purchased lots of used books, but this time I had to lug the books back with me on the train. Not a good plan. If you have never visited Powell's Book Store, do it next time you are in Portland. It requires a map to navigate around the store, up and down ramps, to find all the sections of the store. If you ask for help finding a section, the clerk will say something like, "Oh, that is in the purple section." Consult map. Go.

6. My book club read THE END OF YOUR LIFE BOOK CLUB during December one year. Before the club meeting I scurried around town, and to surrounding towns, to locate used versions of all the books mentioned in the book. I gave each gal one of the used book as a Christmas present and called them our "mini book club" books. These books are still circulating among all the gals, nineteen in all. (The reading list from which I made my selections.)

7. When I was a high school librarian I would visit the local friends-of-the-public-library sale each year and purchase all the huge, old, ratty dictionaries they had for sale. They usually cost me 50¢ each. When I returned to school the next day, I would give them away to appreciative teachers. They liked the big, ratty dictionaries because students never pocketed them accidentally or stole them. BTW, looking up how to spell a word in a paper dictionary seems to be a lost art.

8. One of my jobs as librarian was to weed to collection to keep it fresh and current. I weeded a book full of flower photos, another of art photos, and another of children's literature illustrations and stories. Instead of throwing the books away, I cut out the photos, laminated them, and created three different lessons that teachers could use to enhance their poetry or writing units.

9. Last summer I flew to New York and then drove across country with my daughter who was returning after two years of graduate school at Sarah Lawrence University. She and I talked ahead of time and had everything planned out of what audiobooks we would listen to on our cross-country trip. We completed six audiobooks on our six day journey, from New York to Washington State. We had four or five other audiobooks ready, just in case we needed them. (See list here.)

10. Speaking of audiobooks, one summer the family and I went camping at the Washington coast with a group from church. We had spent the day at one beach enjoying the sand and sun, and drove back to our camp site several miles away as it got dark. We were listening to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys on audiobooks as we drove. By the time we returned to our camp site we were at a really good part of the story so we sat in the car, in the dark, in the woods, listening to the story. Someone from our group saw us, and came up to the car, knocked on the window, and scared us half to death. We were all so absorbed in the story we didn't see him approaching.

What about you. What weird, outrageous, uncharacteristic, crazy thing have you done for the love of books?