Book Bargains!

At the Friends of the Library sale Thursday evening, I didn't guess very well in picking books. But today I went by there coming back from the P.O. I bought 7 books for 6 bucks. When I got home, I found that one had listings up to $50+, so I listed mine for $30.00. Another one had only one listing on Amazon for $35.00, so I matched that price. BUT, a third book was listed nowhere, but based on a little research of some similar later books, I priced mine at $195.00! Listed two more of the books I bought at more ordinary prices (under ten dollars), and will return the other two for them to sell again.

Makes me feel a little bit guilty, but not much. But to sort of make up, tomorrow I'm taking them a big bagfull of nearly new books to add to the sale. I also signed up to "sit and sell" next Thursday evening, the penultimate sale day.

Two of the books I bought Thursday night are biographies of Sojourner Truth. I read one of them. Surprised to learn that she was a northern slave, not southern; she was born Isabel Van Wegener, and later renamed herself. All her slave years were spent in New York state. She met a lot of famous people, including President Abraham Lincoln who autographed one of her books for her. Apparently it was easier for slaves to gain their freedom in NY than in a lot of other states, maybe because slavery there grew out of the original Dutch settlers' custom of having indentured servants who worked for a certain period of time and then were free. After awhile, finding they could get away with it, the Dutch started keeping people as slaves, but it was still possible to make a "freedom deal" in rare cases. Sojourner and her parents and siblings had to speak Dutch; she didn't learn English until various slave-owners scolded, cajoled, or beat it into her. She never learned to read and write; she dictated her books and other papers.