Friends of the Seattle Public Library Book Sale

One of our city’s most cherished pride-and-joys is that we’ve been, voted, fairly consistently, one of America’s most literate cities.

Whether that title is deserved is without question once you see the crowds that pack an old airplane hangar at Magnuson Park twice yearly for the Friends of the Seattle Public Library Book Sale. Yes. Pack an airplane hangar.

The sale, held in April and September (check the website for upcoming dates), is run by the grassroots, non-profit Friends of the Seattle Public Library, which supports the public library system with volunteers, advocacy and public events. While the Friends also run the small gift shop inside the main downtown branch, their crowning jewel is the book sale, which sells over 200,000 donated, discarded or no-longer-needed books, prints, CDs, and VHS and DVD movies to benefit the library system.

The sales are held over weekends, with Fridays open to members for a preview sale and silent auction of rare and collectible items while Saturday/Sunday is open to the public.  Everything in the sale, unless placed in the “Better Books” room, is a dollar, which is what attracts the huge crowds and keeps the sale buzzing with a palatable, calm sense of literate mayhem somewhere between the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and a wedding dress sample sale. Sunday afternoons, prices can drop as low as a quarter per book. Both private citizens and retail book buyers cram into the aisles, so be prepared to have to ditch perusing with any sort of logic or reason.

Comfortable shoes and a wheeled bag are musts (the sale only has a limited number of boxes or bags available for purchases. Besides—those get too heavy to carry quickly). The sale used to accept cash only, but now is equipped to handle all major credit cards.

- by Caren Gussoff Sumption, Seattle Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Caren Gussoff Sumption

Caren Gussoff Sumption is a freelance writer and editor from Seattle, WA. She's written for USA Today, the Seattle Times/NW Source, MSN and AOL, and her fiction has been published worldwide. She received her MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.