Book sale draws dedicated readers

TWO Foxton readers, Raewyn Mullan and Jo-Ann McAlpine, headed off the locals to be first outside the doors for the opening of the Feilding Public Library's 11th annual five-day book sale on Monday.

Carrying two large shopping bags each, the pair arrived an hour before the start time of 10am and were looking forward to culling out some of the 4000 books that were on offer.

“We’ve been coming to this sale for the last few years,” said Raewyn, “because it offers a wide selection of material at good prices.”

Two other regular book sale enthusiasts, Trevor Richards (Rongotea) and Stephen Johnson (Feilding), were also among the 50 people who queued outside the library doors and on the hunt for aviation and music-related material.

Library Manager, Simon Johnson, said steady sales throughout the day realised about $2800, a heartening opening day return, with nearly half the stock snapped up by eager buyers.

“There was quite a demand for large print books for retirement homes, with trolleys having to be used to transport the books out to the vans.”

Mr Johnson said another pattern to emerge was the number of mothers taking away up to 30 children’s books at a time.

“That was pleasing as it means the books are still doing the job that we bought them for – to enliven children’s minds.”

He said several buyers each purchased between 50 to 60 books, with non-fiction titles like gardening and travel proving popular, though fiction titles had also gone “pretty well”.

New stock is ordered from the money raised. Last year’s sale yielded nearly $5000.