Stonemanor second-hand book sale

One of the regular events in my annual calendar are the second-hand book sales that are organised at the Stonemanor shop in Everberg, to the east of Brussels. Twice a year, in June and September, the shop car park is taken over by volunteers from ActionAid, who collect and sell English-language books in aid of their charity.

The books on sale range from pulp fiction up to unread copies of recent prize-winning novels, as well as all sorts of non-fiction. The prices are extremely low; the books are priced by the centimeter, so that a brilliant find costs the same as a dog-eared trashy novel - the price is around 1 Euro per 1,5 cm. Over the years I have bought hundreds of books, many of them in perfect condition, many in hardback, and many of them otherwise unavailable except through Amazon.

This June's book sale was yesterday, and as usual I came away with a box of books, including;

• Paul Coelho, The Alchemist
• Louis de Bernieres, Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord
• Louis de Bernieres, The War of Don Emmanuels Nether Parts
• Pat Barker, Another World
• Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm
• William Trevor, Felicia's Journey
• Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
• Joseph O'Connor, Redemption Falls
• Alex Garland, The Beach
• Alex Garland, Coma
• Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
• Barry Unsworth, After Hannibal

In addition I picked up a few non-fiction books, such as;

• Richard Taylor, How to Read a Church
• Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History
• Thomas de Waal, Black Garden - Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War
• One Hundred Years in Egypt - Paths of Italian Archaeology

My partner picked up about the same number of books, all equally interesting, and we also bought a handfull of books (mostly Douglas Adams) for our son who wasn't there. All in all, a very profitable trip out to the suburbs, and one that I'll repeat in September. In the meantime, I have enough books to keep me happy over the summer!