Bookshelf Traveling - June 13, 2020

Time for another round of Bookshelf Traveling in Insane Times which is being hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness.   The idea is to share one of your neglected bookshelves, and this bottom shelf is truly a mixture of books read and unread.

My mother read The Sword in the Stone to my sister and me when we were about 6 and 9, and I read the rest of The Once and Future King as a teen, finding a copy identical to hers at the Barnes & Noble buying office around 2000.   It was like a treasure trove there and I rarely left empty-handed.  Back in the day, the B&N bookstore buyers received a copy of nearly every book published, most of which they didn’t want, so would pile them on shelves in the hall.  Even after budgets got cut, we still sent copies of books we thought someone would like or should see.   However, once with great difficulty, I got Ken Dryden’s memoir autographed for the sports buyer and on my next visit I saw it discarded on a shelf.   “Lisa!  Did you even notice it was inscribed to you?!” I said with annoyance, forgetting the client is always right.   The freebies were really not meant for the publishers’ sales reps but if we saw something we wanted we would either grab it or ask for permission to grab it!