So, I happened to be driving behind a Half Price Books on Sunday afternoon and noticed this horror... a dumpster full of books. That's right, you guessed it: I went dumpster diving. Snagged about a dozen titles before they politely told me to move along (for liability reasons).
What about donating to a library sale? Or the local American Association of University Women, which has a major book sale to fund scholarships? What a big, frigging waste. Among the dumped: A biography of Amelia Earhart. Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina. Seriously... Dorothy Allison in a dumpster.
And this hard-boiled crime gem from 1936: Confidential, by Donald Henderson Clarke, complete with a Mary Astor lookalike pouting on the cover. A blurb from the jacket:
Barry Ross was a newspaper reporter who would cheerfully have confessed that he was a worthless scamp, far too fond of women, far too lax about money, far too indulgent in liquor. But he had human decency and he responded to the dark loveliness of Rhoda Field, and these traits started him on a campaign to "get" the biggest big shot of New York crime -- Steinhart.
To quote a line from the novel: You look too nice to be in a dump like this.
1 comment:
Score on the find!!!!
Actually they have to dump those books and no they can't give them away. It's ridiculous I know. You're lucky because they're suppose to pour bleach all over them when they're dumped.
Sad but true.
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