Westport Friends Meeting

Book sale Saturday July 9

At 11 am on Saturday, July 9, 2005, the 44th Annual Westport Quaker Meeting Used Book Sale will start when a whistle blows and people are allowed into the main tent.

While some visitors shop early in the special paperback section in the Meeting House (it opens at 10 am), others roam around just outside the main tent, straining to see what’s on the tables so they can rush to their choices when the whistle blows at 11. Table after table of books are arrayed under the large tent and in the buildings on the grounds of the 190 year-old Quaker Meetinghouse.

Last year more than 19,000 books were sorted and placed in categories ranging from local history to travel, from humor to religion and philosophy, from cookbooks to large format art books—and even sci-fi and harlequin romances! This year there will be as many, or more.

Books are priced individually, from 6-for-a-dollar paperbacks to more costly, hardbound first editions and other gems separated for special display on the “Better Books” table. A number of families have donated entire libraries—so you never know what will turnup! One year a first edition of Moby Dick found its way onto the tables! That’s a dramatic example, but there have been quite a number of other wonderful finds over the past four decades of the event.

Light lunch and snacks will be available to sustain the browsers. The opening day of the sale runs until dusk on Saturday, and the sale continues daily for about two weeks thereafter.

In its more than 40 years, the Book Sale has usually enjoyed fair weather, but it has gone on despite rain, heat, and even Hurricane Beulah. And so it will go on next month!

For more information call: 508-636-4963