On Book Hauls

I'm not terribly "with it", generally speaking, and so I was unaware of the YouTube genre of "Book Haul" which Donald references in his post today. Like the woman in the parable who calls in all her neighbors to celebrate the finding of her lost coin, the bibliophile cannot rejoice alone in a good haul. Perhaps one of the reasons such joys must be shared is that there is a glorious commonality to the experiences of all book hoarders. Don writes:

You could do a lot with a dollar when you were a kid in the sixties. Comic books cost 12 cents, cokes were a dime, candy could be purchased for a nickel to a dime. However, I spent a fair part of my money at the local Goodwill. Paris did not have a bookstore, but the Goodwill had a bookcase with used paperbacks and hardbacks. The paperbacks were a nickel and the hardbacks were a dime. New used books came in fairly frequently. Most Saturday mornings I would go into the Goodwill and search through the books. It was there I first made the acquaintance of Plato, Aristotle and Aristophanes. On one memorable day, the divine Dante came my way for the first time with a paperback copy of Purgatorio, and a “new life” began for me. History books were plentiful, especially on the Civil War and World War II and I gobbled them up. Thus I began my personal library, and I have some of those books to this day. And so my shameful addiction devotion to purchasing mass quantities of books as cheaply as I can began.

The times and places were different, but certainly by age ten I had caught the book bug, and talked about "my library", which I consciously built -- acquiring copies even of books my parents already owned so that years hence, when I was on my own, my library wouldn't have gaps in it. (Ah, the idealism of youth. I did not realize how inevitable it is that every library have gaps in it.)

And from the comments, what clearer sign of a bibliophile can one find than this from Joe Green:

Unfortunately, over the years my book shelves got so crowded I was forced to donate many to local libraries and charities, and sometimes would find them recycled at area flea markets, where, succumbing to a sentimental streak, I would often buy them back.