Terrors and delights of the Mutchmor Book Sale
By Elspeth Tory
On a cold March morning six years ago, my neighbour brought me along as a volunteer for the First Avenue Book Sale (now the Mutchmor Book Sale). She oversaw “Collection & Sorting” and was looking for helpers. “Collection is tough,” she insisted, “but sorting can be hilarious.” Confused and intrigued, I sat down at the book collection desk for my first shift, not knowing what to expect.
Book donations started off slowly. Organized parents – I have never been one of those – arrived first. They came with neatly stacked boxes, labelled with the number of books and their child’s teacher’s name. All donations are attributed to individual classrooms in a fierce competition for book-sale supremacy and the prize of a class activity at GNAG. As the week progressed, books started appearing at a furious pace. Competition heightened. We could barely keep track and weren’t always able to vet the boxes properly. There were coffee table books from 1985, piles of ragged magazines, stacks of Jazzercise and Buns of Steel VHS tapes and boxes that visibly burst with mold when opened. I quickly learned to be more vigilant, knowing we’d otherwise end up with lots of items we couldn’t sell (or even donate).
Fast forward a few years and the “Collection & Sorting” torch had been passed on to me. As I walked into the book-sale room at Mutchmor, panic set in. The piles of 25,000 donated books weighed heavily on my usually optimistic spirit. It’s like I was stuck in the opening scenes of a Marie Kondo episode about a hoarder who couldn’t find her husband or her cats because they’d been crushed by her obsessive book-collection hobby. “There is no way this will be ready in a week,” I said out loud, alone in the room. But I read through my predecessor’s notes and set up the “Sorting Circle” as instructed. The “Sorting Circle,” despite sounding like a satanic ritual, is an extremely efficient method for bringing some semblance of order to the book chaos. A donated box is brought into the middle of the circle, then sorted by volunteers into one of the 30 labelled boxes surrounding the centre. Margaret Atwood? Fiction, A-C. P.D. James? Mystery, J-L. Harry Potter? Children’s series. Or possibly Youth Series. Or maybe Youth Chapter Books? Some are trickier than others. Full boxes are then moved to their appropriate section in the room, waiting to be shelved by the next team of volunteers.
Over my years of book sorting, I discovered what my neighbour meant when she said the task was occasionally hilarious. Every year, a dedicated team of volunteer book sorters find absolute gems. Cooking with Pooh! got a giggle from my children, along with Does It Fart?, an illustrated guide. Crafts for Your Microwave was simultaneously nostalgic and terrifying. His Turn to Cook provided a gentle (if somewhat passive aggressive) nudge to dads who might want to help more in the kitchen. Wake Up or Die Poor offered direct, no-nonsense business advice, while Spell Crafts: Creating Magical Objects explored alternative offerings. For those looking for relationship advice, we found Why Did I Marry You, Anyway?, Acupressure for Lovers and Sex Practice in the Later Years. Filed under fiction, we also had How to Get Your Cat to Do What You Want. If it was a little bit of self help you were looking for, there was always Feelings, Buried Alive, Never Die for a little light reading.
I’ve taken to posting these winning discoveries on my Facebook feed every year, much to the delight of my online friends. In social media streams filled with tropical vacations, accomplished children and flawless achievements, it’s nice to find out that a publisher somewhere gave the thumbs up to How to Poo at Work.
We are eagerly looking forward to this year’s discoveries. Be sure to visit mutchmorbooksale.com for details on how, what and when to donate. The annual Mutchmor Book Sale runs from April 23 to 26 and is a fundraiser for the Mutchmor student council.
Elspeth Tory lives in the Glebe with her husband and two children and is the co-chair of this year’s Mutchmor Book Sale along with Adrienne Annan.
