Random Thought - A Massive Sidetrack

So this past Saturday I acquired a massive diversion that will likely slow my reading and posting rate down to a crawl. I went to the semi-annual Purcellville Library Book Sale and, as I usually do I headed straight for the science fiction and fantasy section to begin hunting through the offerings with the aim of filling a couple of boxes with books. While I was busily pulling out piles of books and tossing them into my bags, one of the volunteers working the sale walked up to me, and we had basically this conversation:

Her: "We will sell the fantasy and science fiction books for one dollar a box."
Me: "One dollar a box? You mean one dollar for the little boxes?"
Her:"No, one dollar for any box, including those bigger pallet boxes."
Me:  Blink
Me: "How many boxes can I buy?"
Her: "As many as you want."
Me: "I'll take all of them."
Her: "You're kidding."
Me: "No, I'm serious. Just figure out a total while I pull my car around."

And so I bought every science fiction and fantasy book they had. Well, almost. Another science fiction fan came up when I was getting things together and was a little disappointed that I was taking all the books. So I gave him two boxes of books and one box of magazines. I love books, but I'm willing to share the love with other fans. Even so, I ended up with the haul of books in the picture. After I got them home and was able to count them up, I found out that I had acquired 1,297 books. For thirty-four dollars. Which works out to 0.26 cents per book. Breaking it down by type, the pile includes 47 hardbacks, 5 trade paperbacks, 1,148 mass market paperbacks, and 98 genre magazines (mostly old issues of Asimov's Science Fiction, and Fantasy & Science Fiction).

But now I need to sort through these, clean them, remove all the stickers and price tags, and then catalog them. I know for certain that some of these books are duplicates of books I already have in my collection, but I'm sure I'll find them good homes. But this is going to take a while, just getting them all into alphabetical order is going to take a couple days. Getting them cataloged in my preliminary list will take a while, let along getting them listed in my comprehensive database. This means that I will be side tracked for the next two to three weeks at least, which will cut into me reading and reviewing time, which will slow me down even more than my current glacially slow pace. On the flip side, I'm in between the spring session and summer session of classes, so that frees up a fair amount of time per week for the next few weeks. I'm not complaining. I'm going to be spending many hours with these books in the next few weeks. Other bibliophiles will certainly understand that this is a prospect that I am looking forward to.

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