Gift Book Meditations

Sorting through the donated books: No, the Main Library does not need another copy of Sena Jeter Naslund's Ahab's Wife. It's another one of those mysterious differences between our different locations: all of the branch copies are checked out, but all of Main Library's copies are in. Yes, we do need another copy of Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven--all of Main's copies are out and most of the La Farge and Bookstop copies as well. This book has been in continuous demand for two years. Alice Bailey's Esoteric Healing, Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip, Alan Toogood's Container Gardening, Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Living to Tell the Tale? Yes yes yes yes.
       ...No on Roadie : a true story (at least the parts I remember) by Karl Kuenning. Despite its wonderful subtitle, it doesn't seem to be something we need. Yes (and zowie) on a dozen shiny new books published in 2005 (from whom? why? but thank you!). Yes (as usual) on half a shelf of other titles we didn't yet have in the collection. See a few of them in the image on the right. They will turn up in the database soon.
       Have we mentioned lately how grateful we are for your continuing generosity with donated books? At the moment, 22% of all the items in the collection were donated. Even more important, 13% of the titles in the collection--22,000 or so of our total of 173,000 titles--have ONLY donated copies. Absent your gifts, we wouldn't have these books and other materials available at all. Whether multiple copies of popular titles, or one single copy of something we would otherwise not have, Santa Feans are richer for the gifts you give us.