used book sale

Once a month my local library (Palo Alto City) has a book sale. Today was the first time I'd gone in several months. It is a huge operation--tons of volunteers help out. It's like going to an full size library and everything is for sale and extremely cheap. There are so many people that go that you have to wait in line so they can keep the number of people within fire code limits. The volunteers are always book enthusiasts who have pert opinions on where books should be categorized. For this reason I'm always excited to find a book in the wrong category. The mistakes are caused because of the misleading titles--which unless you've read it, you would never know. Today I found "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" in the humor section. Lots of books are funny, but that doesn't put it in the humor section. This book is an autobiography of a physicist. I've also found romance novels in the cookbook section--something similar to the title, "Cooking Up a Storm." That one didn't have a single recipe! Hrmph.

The punchline is, today while looking in the cookbook section (again! I have far too many cookbooks) I overheard a volunteer call out, "The person who put Flora and Fauna Designs in the cookbook section should know I am very angry! Someone might have been looking for this book and could not find it because it is in the wrong section!" Then I hid my nose in the cookbook I was looking in (the recipe on the page was for suckling pig..hmm) and tried to look nonchalant.