Book Sale Quirks

First off, I find that technology is sneakier than I am. I had time at the beginning of April and I was thinking about various book sale blogs so I wrote several and only posted one. I thought that the date on the blog post would be the date I published the blog. I got surprised. It turns out to be the date I wrote the original entry. So now you know why we published so many entries for April 5 and 6.

Now about quirks in finding books at the book sale:
Today I was looking at the best seller lists. I was surprised to learn the Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert has been listed for over two years. The Washington Post has it on the paperback non-fiction list at over 120 weeks. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson has been going longer at over 150 weeks. That is amazing to me.

Both of these books are memoirs and selling them poses a challenge to us. The George Mason Friends have roughly 50 different categories for books for adults. The one category for adults we don't have is "Memoir" or even "Biography". We have found that people interested in History might be interested in biographies of historic figures. Therefore, we keep the books about Lincoln with American History and the books about Napoleon in Military History. Following that line of thought, the latest book about a celebrity would be in Performing Arts. So Melissa Gilbert's book Prairie Tale would be with the books about Acting and Dance. A book about Michael Jackson might be in Music and might be with Celebrity Bios.

Under this scheme, where would we put Eat, Pray, Love? We have settled on the category of Travel. Our reasoning is that Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about her time in Italy, India, and Indonesia. Therefore, the book is similiar in some ways to the books people have written about there time in south of France (Peter Mayle comes to mind).

Where would Three Cups of Tea belong? We are still struggling with that. Since we put a lot of politics and current events in the History section, we decided to try Three Cups of Tea in with the World History, which is where you would find other books about current events in Afghanistan.

Are you looking for a particular biography or memoir at the sale? Ask one of the volunteers wearing a GM Friends apron if you need help finding a category.

Come to our sale April 29 -May 2. Shop. Buy.