Here are two stacked reasons why our house will never be empty of books. The girls and I took the van to a book sale at the small town library John and I lived near as newlyweds (The glamour apartment we stuffed ourselved into, above the pizza place and next to the laudromat on Main Street in Whitney Point, to which I would walk home after unsuccessfully trying to teach twelfth grade high school students how to read). We weren't able to go to the bag sale, but the kind librarian saw the book-lust in my eyes. She held Susannah while I made a tidy stack of wishlist books, and after I started weeding some out, she had pity and gave me a deal. A box of hardcovers for three bucks. Since the hardcover books were supposed to be fifty cents each, I had planned to only spend five dollars, AND I had a zillion books stacked up, I bit. Did I ever. The books were all hardcover, barely used library books. I packed lots away for birthdays and Christmas, including a few My First Little House on the Prairie books and other, until now, library-only favorites of Mildred's. I made an idiot of myself thanking her over and over and over again, and I grinned all the way home. (Stupid materialistic American.)