Sale of the New Century

by Nancy Scott

It's my secret life—hoarding books for future reading.  Bags and closets full of them, not counting the ones I've read and had to keep and find shelf space for.

But I get most of my books from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.  NLS books are borrowed.  I have to return them.  I order just enough books for a month and I read the cassettes and flip the cards on the green containers and  mail them back as soon as possible.

No chance for hoarding.  No chance to have my own collection of pleasure-reading that I can dive into at any moment.  Imagine never running out of books.  Imagine having a big mysterious stash that I can fondle and wonder about.  (Shouldn't everyone have thirty things to read at any one time?)

I found the perfect solution to this desire two years ago.  I began begging to go to public library booksales.  I happily scooped up cassette books that libraries couldn't normally get rid of.  And I got them cheap. Sometimes I bought so many that a staff person had to help carry them to the car.

There are two public libraries near me:  the Mary Meuser Memorial Library and the Easton Area Public Library.  They both have no cassette fiction left.  And I have the surprise, whenever I want it, of an unknown book I can keep forever or pass on again, not to mention a wider variety of fiction genres to suit my ever-changing moods.  (The older I get, the more fiction I need.)

Everyone else has turned to iPods and tiny gadgets or at least CDs.  But I have six cassette players at home.

Some cassette books are long and unabridged (the best kind).  And some are recorded by Books on Tape (the absolute best kind).  Most work fine, with an occasional smack of a tape to get the wheels unstuck.  And the books are so inexpensive that the occasional unreadable cassette is not a problem.

When I finish these books I pass them on to other blind people who will have cassette players for a few more years till the technology changes. After all, I have to make room for the next batch.  Maybe people will start getting rid of books on CD.  Or maybe there's one more hold-out that wants to get rid of all those Stephen King and James Patterson novels in her closet.  I can't be the only person with this pack-rat addiction, can I?

I think public libraries and their local blind people should find each other.  Cassette reading, hoarding, and trading could be going on everywhere.  All those books-on-tape would have other lives.  It really could be the Sale of the New Century.