1500 books!

Tempting.

They also had a couple of other signs:

Sail of the century!

and

Everythink must go!

I decided to give it a miss.

For now.

I walked out with

• The Goodbye Look
  Ross McDonald
• Inland
  Gerald Murnane
• The Great Fire
  Shirley Hazzard
• In Cold Blood
  Truman Capote
• Short Novels and Stories
  A. P. Chekhov
• One Writer's Beginnings
  Eudora Welty
• Unpolished Gem
  Alice Pung
• My Universities
  M. Gorky
• The Book of Snobs
  W. M. Thackeray
• Structuralism
  John Sturrock
• Studies in the Recent Australian Novel
  K. G. Hamilton ed.
• The Useless Donkeys
  Lydia Pender, Judith Cowell

All but two in hardcover. I already had some of these but I am of an age where paperback is just not good enough any more for books I like. This book sale had plenty of stuff in hardcover and a surprising amount was quality.

The pricing was concerning at first. It seemed that the bigger and thicker the book, the higher the price. Never mind the quality, feel the width. This theory seemed to be abandoned at the checkout, I was charged $10 for the above which is a lot less than I thought it would be.

The sale continues into the week. I may be back.

I couldn't help it.

It was only 10 bucks a box.

I am now officially on a book diet.

(AND I carried the bastards across campus, with a backpack full of laptop, camera and iPod and associated leads and bits and bobs. I need seeing to.)

UPDATE: For those who wish to torture themselves a little more, I have put the list of books in the two boxes over the fold.

The Black Swan of Tresspass Humphrey McQueen
My Childhood Gorky
Keywords Raymond Williams
A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms G.A. Wilkes
The Antomist Federico Andahazi
The heart is deceitful above all things J.T. Leroy
The Grisly Wife Rodney Hall
That was then, this is now S.E. Hinton
Thoughtlines Bob Carr
Meredith Siegfried Sassoon
Art and Revolution John Berger
Native Realm Czeslaw Milosz
I am David Anne Holm
Miss Wyoming Douglas Coupland
D.H. Lawrence: Novelist, Prophet and Poet Stephen Spender ed.
Imperium Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Nature of Matter Otto R. Frisch
Granta 41 Biography
The Camera and its Image Arthur Goldsmith
The Devil and James McAuley Cassandra Pybus
Arcady in Australia Coral Lansbury
An Australian Treasury of Popular Verse Jim Haynes ed.
Myself when young Henry Handel Richardson
The Oxford Anthology of Australian Literature Kramer and Mitchell eds.
South East Asian Cookbook Charmaine Solomon
The Bill: the first 10 years Hilary Kingsley
Griffith Review 4: Making Perfect Bodies

(Just to gloat) I bought:

Fifty 'Bab' Ballads W.S. Gilbert
Poems St John of the Cross
Ariel Sylvia Plath
Winter Trees Sylvia Plath
Remains of Elmet Ted Hughes and Fay Godwin
The Vernacular Republic Les Murray
The Long Game and other poems Bruce Beaver
What I came to say Raymond Williams
Literary Sydney: A walking guide Jill Dimond and Peter Kirkpatrick
Reading Australian Poetry Andrew Taylor
Heat 7
The Historical Novel Georg Lukacs
A Primer of English Versification James McAuley
Gone Bush Roger McDonald ed.
A Mother's Disgrace Robert Dessaix
Correction Thomas Bernhard
The Simple Gift Steven Herrick
North of the Moonlight Sonata Kerryn Goldsworthy
One-Eyed Cat Paula Fox
The Glade Within the Grove David Foster
Religious Commitment and Secular Reason Robert Audi
John shines through Augustine A.P. Carleton
Sporting Fever Michael Parkinson
and 12 kids picture books.

And I paid $39.

Yes, I am feeling very pleased with myself.

Dean at Happy Antipodean has also blogged his purchases.