Book-Swap Mania Waxing
Edition of: June 6, 2014
For book lovers, the first Monday of June at the Green Toad Book Store is even better than Black Friday.
The line of customers anxious to get the best books first, wrapped from the front of 198 Main St. to past the Latte Lounge. And inside, owner Michelle Barry watched the clock, her hand ready to flip the Open/Closed sign.
The clock hit 10 a.m., she opened the door and the 5th Annual Green Toad Book Swap began.
“It’s my favorite day of the year!” said store clerk Anne VanDusen as book lovers poured in.
Though they never do an official count, Barry estimates that there were between 2,500 and 3,000 books donated to the swap this year, a record. “Every year when May starts, we think ‘oh, we’re not going to get that many this year,’ and then by the end of the month, people are donating in droves.”
The swap started from a conversation Barry had with co-worker Claire Willis in 2009. “We thought it would be nice to offer a community book recycling program,” she said. “It’s so simple – bring a book, get a book.”
There are paperbacks and hardcovers, well-thumbed romances and pristine mysteries. “One year someone found a signed first edition by a very famous author,” said Barry. “I wish we’d realized that beforehand. I might have snatched it up myself!”
Then there are the unexpected and outdated. “Someone brought in some travel books from the 1970s,” she said. “We had a good laugh over those, but we gave them a ticket anyways. And here you go, ‘American-Russian Relations in the Middle East’, why not?”
Someone even brought a copy of Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken,” a New York Times best-seller. “This is a $27 book, we have it in stock,” she said. “Someone is going to get a real bargain.”
This year, Hospice joined in, encouraging people to donate books to the swap and give Hospice the tickets so that they could pick out books and donate the tickets directly to Hospice families.
Any leftover books – and there are some, Barry says – are donated to the Fox Hospital Auxiliary, with children’s books going to Head Start.
“It’s overwhelming, but we have it down to a science,” said Barry. “And every year, it gets bigger.”