Hooray for Book Warehouses or The Miracle of Buy Five Get One Free! (Again)

[This post originally posted on September 2, 2011. If you’re wondering why, like the proverbial bad penny, it has turned back up, visit here. Otherwise just read it. :)]

So The Fiancee and I recently returned from a spot o’ business travel that involved us driving over 1700 miles to visit four states in less than a week.  Let’s just say it was a bit busy, with lots of car time and lots of coffee shop reading by me…  So, in other words, let’s just say hooray for me because I got to do all kinds of things I like – drink coffee, read, listen to audiobooks (my new favorite car thing, courtesy of The Fiancee – check out his site, TheAudioBookGuy.com, for reviews of what we listened to!), and talk about anything and nothing.  Oh yeah, and SHOP.

Shop, you ask?  Shop indeed, I reply.  Shop for books.  Shop for books because The Fiancee TOLD ME TO.  Seriously.  How much do I love this guy?!

Picture this – we have just spent the night in a suburb of Philadelphia near the home of my very good friends Michelle and Ray and their two darling little girls, Grayson and Avery.  We had a lovely evening, of course, with much wine, good food, great conversation, and playing-with-adorable-girls-time.  The Fiancee was exhausted after a slew of business meetings, but he was a champ and let me sit and talk as long as my little heart wanted – and then the next morning, when we were heading off to the next round of appointments and meetings, he gave me the greatest gift of all.  He drove me to a book warehouse and told me that we should wander around inside and not worry about the time.  🙂

This place was amazing – I honestly don’t know if it even had a real name.  It was literally a warehouse space – the front was full of sales shelves. Shelves upon shelves of books, categorized and alphabetized – from chicklit to science fiction to classics to non-fiction to audiobooks to reference books to kids’ books.  From collector’s editions to cheap paperbacks.  It was incredible.  The back was full of storage shelves – as far as the eye could see.  Every book was two dollars – and when you bought five, you got one free.  And every single week the staff rotates the stock so that books make their way from storage to the sales shelves.  So every single week, the stock is entirely new.

How freaking sweet is that?!

My only regret – we live almost six hours away and can’t go every single week to witness this amazing rotation.

But I did get to spend a chunk of time grabbing up books (I dutifully picked six, of course – what a bargain shopper I am, eh?).  And when The Fiancee could only find five audiobooks he wanted (they were five dollars – see how his habit is more expensive than mine?  Teehee), he told me that I could pick “his” get-one-free book.  Ah, his generosity truly knows no bounds…  I mean, talk about knowing exactly what gift to give me…  😉

Anyway, here is the list of my seven books – just in case you are curious.  It’s a weird mix, which is the usual result for me of a used book sale – some classics, some paperbacks, some literary, some not, and one beautiful hardcover bound in fabulous purple with a built-in bookmark (the Arthur book).  Hooray for me indeed, she said!  And hooray even more for the concept of book warehouses.  And Fiancees who know us and love us in our shopping addictions…  😉

Jill’s Fabulous Seven-Books-For-Ten-Dollars Deals

• The Custom Of The Country – Edith Wharton
• Deadtown – Nancy Holzner
• The Tomb – F. Paul Wilson
• Salem’s Lot – Stephen King
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood – Charles Dickens
• King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table – Roger Lancelyn Green
• A Conspiracy of Paper – David Liss