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Now that spring has arrived and we are enjoying some sunny days, the thermometer indicates that it still feels like winter. Since you may be staying inside by a warm fire and enjoying a cup of hot tea or hot chocolate, it might be a good time to go through some of your books and decide which ones you probably will never read again. So you may decide that it is a good time to donate some of your books to make room for the new ones you want to put in your library or add to your to “your to be read” stack! There are many places where you might donate your books such as the local library, schools, church libraries, thrift stores, or even The Book Shelf which is a used bookstore in Tullahoma, and is the fundraising arm of the local Literacy Council whose goal and purpose is to support adult basic education in Coffee County.

  Some advice to share with you when you are donating your books is to flip through the pages before donating them to find those items which you have stuck in your books when taking your break while reading them.

At the bookshelf, we have found many items in the books that have been donated such as boarding passes, bills, cards, prescriptions, love letters, money, receipts, notes, pictures, and the item most often found is toilet paper. Some of these items certainly give us thought for where the person reading the book was when reading the book. When we find pictures, it makes us very sad if we do not know where that picture came from or from whom it came. Many of the pictures are family groups or of children, and we would like to return these pictures to the families. Another thing we find are inscriptions when the book has been given as a gift. They are pictures of the giver’s heart! One picture we found was of a young woman hugging a tree. It was a beautiful picture in color, but none of us who work in the book store knew who she was. That is, until we were reading the obituaries in the local paper, and there was that picture so the mystery was solved. When we were opening the bookstore and shelving our first donations of books, one book had a rattle to it. The volunteer looked at the book and opened it, and she found that it was a book safe. Where the pages had been now contained a black box in which were 10 pieces of jewelry (gold, silver, and diamonds!) plus a credit card. It just so happened that one of the volunteers knew the person whose name was on the credit card but knew she had moved away. Another volunteer had gone to church with her, and with a little detective work, she was able to obtain the person’s phone number, and we called to say we had the book and its treasures.

They were amazed that we had found it, and we were happy to be able to return it to them!

Every day it is a new venture when you are dealing with books … whether you are accepting donations, shelving them, recommending them to customers, or reading them ourselves. We know that books when read open up a whole new vista for the mind and let individuals dream and formulate ideas of their own!