Fall bookbuying ritual

I took off from work today and went, as I have every year at this time since 1978, to the annual Friends of the Library booksale at the city library. I find it reassuring to be surrounded for an hour or two by kindred spirits for whom books matter, people to whom the world of ideas just might be real. The crowd today seemed a bit thin, with only a few knots of lookers clotting the aisles and nudging past one another to get to the best books before anyone else. Perhaps the rain and chill which swept in yesterday took their toll on our numbers. After all, most of my competitors in this bargain basement free-for-all were as gray as I am, and thus perhaps more wary than younger people would be about getting out in bad weather, although I did spot more than a few college students, along with several junior humanities faculty scanning the shelves with a laserlike intensity worthy of a young Susan Sontag.

Today I loaded up on Texas history and bird guides. I already have too many bird guides, but I can give away the extras to people who are just getting hooked on the sport. A handful of National Geographics from half a century ago for my daughter Jenny, as per her request. A scholarly overview of Frank Lloyd Wright's ornamental designs, with color illustrations. And as frosting on the cake, a small picture book about porches, the architectural features that to my eyes do the most to humanize a dwelling. Two dozen books for thirty-one dollars. But now I have to find a place to keep them. We have eighteen floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, home to our library of some 4,500 volumes, and recent months' arrivals already form half a dozen stalagmites on the floor in my study.