The Timmins Museum annual Christmas book sale started yesterday in the Red Room and will run until Friday Dec. 23, 2016.
There were books, books and more books. In the words of the immortal Frank Zappa, musician and humourist, “So many books, so little time.”
“We have a trailer full of books in the back,” said Karen Bachman, curator of the Timmins Museum. “Everyday we will literally have new books to choose from.”
“As soon as we empty a table of books,” Bachman added. “We will get another load from the trailer.”
Book lovers can come back over and over again to browse and enjoy the company of a gallery room full of books.
“A room without books is like a body without a soul,” said great Roman thinker, Marcus Tullius Cicero.
The Red Gallery certainly was filled with books and had plenty of soul.
There were reference books, books on languages, the arts, biographies, computers dictionaries, English as a second language, finance self help, geography, history, interesting books, joke books, literature, mysteries, novels, poetry, quiz books, romances, spiritual, theatre, university text books, views of other countries, word puzzles, x-rated books, youth books and zoo animals.
In other words there are books for everyone.
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid,” said British 19th century author Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey.
Cost is not a factor either because these books are extremely affordable.
“They all cost a dollar,” said Meagan Sinclair, Museum Program Coordinator, who was stacking books on the tables in the Red Gallery.
Picking up the thinnest book and the hugest she could find within reach, Sinclair held them up and said. “It doesn’t matter if the book is this thin or this thick – the cost is the same – one dollar.
At that price might as well pick up a dozen. It's cheaper than a twelve pack of beer or a movie.
Some like Groucho Marx have likened books to man’s best friend.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read,” Marx once said waggishly.
The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx.
On a more serious note Ernest Hemingway compared books to a good friend when he said: “There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
Ok so you have more books than you have the time to read them.
Don’t despair Museum Book Sale also have vintage vinyl music LPs, like the 1979 Ross Beattie Public School Choir Recording. Check out to see if someone you know sang on the record.
Then there are DVD collections such as the films of Joan Crawford, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Home Alone 1 and 2. There VHS formatted films, as well as CD’s, music tapes, but no eight track cartridges. Thank god.
And once you are finished buying your books, you can take a quick gander at the Black Gallery’s depiction of Timmins’ early days.
All for free admission. Talk about value for your money and all the books, CD, DVDs you want for a dollar each.
