Last July, we at the Dyer Library set up our huge annual book sale, almost as usual. Although we had all 15,000 or so books on display, we did limit the number of people who could come in to shop, at least in the first days when there was the typical rush. The big difference was, when July ended, the book sale didn’t. Not able to use our rooms for meetings or programs due to Covid, we just left the book sale up all year. It turned out that there were a couple of benefits to that. The first was that we were able to make more money on the book sale this year than ever before. Considering that no book cost more than $1.50 and many were much less, we still managed to bring in more than $14,000 to support the Dyer Library and Saco Museum. The second benefit was that people desperate for reading material were able to create inexpensive but satisfying home collections.

All year long, book donations have poured in and we’ve also weeded our collection to keep it fresh and up-to-date. What that means is that we’ve amassed a vast amount of new books for the coming book sale that will open on Saturday, July 24th at 9:30 a.m. It also means that the rest of this year’s sale — thousands and thousands of high quality books — HAVE TO GO! I must have the rooms cleared out and the tables bare by early July in order to have a place to put a whole huge attic’s worth of books for the next sale.

What does this mean to you? To quote a current television commercial, “Free. Free, free, free. Free. FREE!!!” All remaining books, audios, DVDs, etc. are FREE. We have lots of grocery store bags to pack them up in. No amount that you take is too many. Take one. Take 10. Take 2,000. Please just take them.

The Annual Book Sale is open whenever the library is open. Please don’t miss this opportunity to enlarge your home library, amass books to resell, or just rescue them from whatever their fate would next be! I hope to see you very soon.

Comments are not available on this story.