Today when I was out for lunch, I noticed lots of people hovering over some boxes of books on the sidewalk. Got me thinking about garbage picking, finding free books or getting good books used real cheap.

What are your best book scores? Mine was J.G.Ballard's "Crash" hardcover for 10 cents at the local charity shop. Terrible movie, but I really like Ballard's novels.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2000

Answers

I once picked up a beautiful hard cover autobiography of Ingmar Bergman for $3 at a garage sale. I wrote a lot of papers thanks to that book.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

A couple of summers ago, Ian and I were staying down in London and one day were walking through the gorgeous borough of Richmond-upon- Thames when we came across a jumble sale. I got a big, aged copy of [i]Great Short Stories of the World[/i] for £1.50. It's got short stories...from around the world (der), including all my favourite Guy de Maupassant and O Henry stories, and literally hundreds of others from every imaginable corner of the globe, all the way back to Biblical times. It's wonderful.

That same day, we were walking by the Thames in Richmond and there's an old lady who sells books off of a stall there. I got a copy of Fodor's London travel guide for next to nothing, and I've used it many times to source reasonably-priced hotels and to look up addresses and phone numbers. I also picked up a book called Cyber Kiss for pure cheese factor; it's a young adult book about a girl who meets a guy online and falls in love with him, and he turns out to be this guy from her school who she really hates. It's pretty funny, and I think I see where Nora Ephron got the idea for You've Got Mail.

There are a couple of discount bookstores (County Bookshop and Publisher's Warehouse) in the mall near my house, and I always get good deals there. I got a book of photography called Fathers and Daughters for only a couple of quid; the regular price was £35 or something.

And, evil as Amazon is, I did get Nigella Lawson's first book for half off the cover price from there, and I got her new one at a discount as well. I can't turn that down.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

Half.com has gotten me some sweet deals. But far and away the best is the used book section at this bookstore in Harvard Square- they sell books for 1/2 off the cover price. So a paperback from 60s winds up being 35 cents.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

One of our local libraries has an annual sale at which you can buy books by the bag. It's something ridiculous like $3 per plastic grocery bag. Maybe that's for hardcover and it's $2 for paperback -- something like that. So the last time I remembered to attend, I got a bag full of the crazy old needlecraft books that I love, plus this fabulous OLD Osmonds biography in which Marie says that she only wants to be a housewife when she grows up because it's not right for women to work. And a bunch of junk like that. I like finding old children's books at thrift stores, too. I found a really old Richard Scarry Little Golden Book that I cut up and did all kinds of stuff with. And last week in Dallas I got an old Humpty Dumpty book for 29 cents. But then I left it at Tania's house. I was gonna scan it for backrounds and icons and stuff. But that's okay. I'll find another.

I guess I'm more into old, kitschy books than actual literature.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

I'm not one to fish for bargain literature, either. When I'm bargain shopping, I opt toward the pulp-ish paperbacks from the 40s through the 70s. I got most of my James Bond and Mike Hammer novels for 25 cents each. Some stores call that genre "Men's Adventure" and I know at least one used bookstore that won't even take those in as trades. The other kinds of books I pick up at deep discounts usually are non-fiction things about thinking, reasoning, philosophy, creativity, religion, which have often been used as college texts. With few exceptions, I've loved every old book I've scrounged out of the bargain basements. There's even a place across the street from the University of Denver where, if you buy over a certain number of paperbacks at once, they drop the price to 10 cents a piece!

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

Every month or so the Green Valley Book Fair happens in my town. It is so incredible! Hardbacks and paperbacks (usually released within the last year, and older ones too) cost between $3-$7. They have a great selection of popular fiction, sci-fi, business, computer manuals, self-help, crafts, cooking, children's, and audio books. When I go, I give myself permission to buy whatever I want. I usually end up with around 6 books, maybe spending $25. Cheap thrills! If anyone is coming to Virginia (it's 2 hours southwest of DC and 2 hours west of Richmond) this holiday season and wants to know how to get there, email me.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

My best find was a 70-odd-year-old copy of Frances Hodgeson Burnett's (she wrote The Secret Garden) A Woman of Quality, VERY rare and out of print. I found it at a book fair for a dollar.

I also have a favorite place for my YA Paperback collection, and've found some long-sought books for 50 cents on a regular basis....

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

Gwen, I hear you on old kids books. A lot of the books I have were second hand kids books, encyclopedias or whatnot. Not always kids books. But it's hard to find that stuff cheap now. Used to be like 25 cents--now it's like $2.00 sometimes more.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

Gayla, you'll be happy to know that my friend bought my Neil Sperry book at Half Price Books. It normally sold for $36.95 and she paid $17.49 (she forgot to take the price tag off).

Our libraries never have a book sale. I'm jealous.

-- Anonymous, November 21, 2000

ooh! ooh! ooh!

Mine were: 1. Anne Lamott's "Operating Instructions" in the remainder bin at Kmart or some such.

2. "Gun in Cheek" by ? Pronzini. It's about the WORST of mysteries and detective fiction, with quotes. "The sun rose on my empty stomach." and "My roscoe sneezed, 'Ker-CHEE!'" are two of my favorites.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2000

I bought a hard-back copy of Joseph Wambuagh's "The Black Marble" for 50 cents and found a 5 dollar bill in it (a book mark?).

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2000