It was a crisp, bright Saturday morning when my daughter, Sydney, and I decided to check out the CBC/Calgary Reads Book Sale last weekend.
I had been a blogger for Calgary Reads for months and I wanted to see for myself what we had been talking about. A passionate reader, Sydney was more than happy to join me. She grabbed her Fair’s Fair book bag and jumped in the car.
We walked into the Triwood Arena in Calgary’s Northwest and were immediately greeted by friendly folks, rows and rows of tables loaded with meticulously categorized books and a palpable air of excitement. This was the invasion of the bookworms.
People were eagerly scanning tables for titles by their favourite authors. They gingerly turned the pages of literary gems they had been waiting to read. They filled their book bags with treasures.
I heard comments like “I feel like a kid in a candy store,” “Look, this one is signed!” And, “This book looks like it’s brand new!”
I lost Sydney to the Canadian Fiction table. I myself went to the Cookbook section and then Self-Help.
Half an hour later, my cell phone rang. It was Sydney. “Where are you mom? I can’t fit anything else in my bag!” I found her in Best Sellers, wearing a huge smile, eyes sparkling. She was weighed down by a packed Fair’s Fair bag.
We decided it was time to check out. Together we had 21 books. Our total was $23.00.
After adding up Sydney’s books, the cashier couldn’t help commenting that my “daughter bought some very interesting books.” That’s an understatement. Sydney’s voracious appetite for reading can only be described as curiously eclectic.
She found: four Farley Mowat titles; Margaret Atwood’s Survival and Dancing Girls; Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Café Diaries; Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson; Doctor Fischer of Geneva by Graham Greene; Places Far From Ellesmere by Calgary author, Aritha van Herk; Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne; Your own book of Campcraft by Catherine t. Hammett; New Age Politics: the Emerging new Alternative to Marxism and Liberalism; and The Charter of Rights and Freedoms: A Guide for Canadians (no lie!)
Me? I picked up four cookbooks and one book called The Wisdom of Menopause. What can I say? There was something for everyone at the 2010 CBC/Calgary Reads Book Sale.