"I totally have no other talent and I would be totally out of work if I did anything else." - Neil Young

Our annual church book sale began last week; because I buy so many books from them, at ridiculously low prices, I am feeling compelled to donate some. Although I heartily regret the weeding of my collection when we moved three years ago, it only seems fair that, with all the thousands of books in my house, I should rustle up at least a few to donate. Here's what I found and decided I could part with, with little or no regret.

• Some book I picked up somewhere called An Egg on Three Sticks. No idea why I thought I might want to read it, because, in addition to its ridiculous title, it’s written in the breathy, melodramatic voice of a teenage girl, with little clarifying punctuation, lots of run-on sentences and “you knows” and “likes,” and it drove me BONKERS. The reviewers on Amazon seemed to love it, but I tried three times to read it, and got disgusted very quickly all three times. The time has come to inflict it on someone else.
  
  
• Riding the Bus with my Sister; but Sarah Louise has first dibs on it. Lemme know, SL; I can get it to you if you still want it. Otherwise, to the church sale it goes.
  
  
• A copy of Jane Hamilton’s The Book of Ruth and a copy of Timothy Findley’s The Telling of Lies, both of which I picked up from the free paperback exchange at work, and then lost interest in almost immediately.
  
  
• Duplicate copies of Touch and Feel Farm (It’s a children’s book like Pat the Bunny, get your minds out of that gutter!); Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever (one of the creepiest children’s books ever written, and at least the fourth copy I have given away. Note to gift-givers: It is NOT an acceptable or appropriate baby shower or baby gift. It is CREEPY. And icky. And ew-wy.); Magic Treehouse’s Vacation under the Volcano and Tigers at Twilight (these two duplicates are due entirely to Joke’s son, who generously and kindly sent all his MT books to Primo).
  
  
• I Want to Know About the Holy Spirit; and its companions, I Want to Know About the Church, and I Want to Know About Jesus.
  
  "The best way to learn is by seeing, doing, and exploring things for yourself. And what better way to learn about the Holy Spirit than this fun, informative book!...It's packed with full-color photos, cartoons, and graphics. And it's ready to guide you into adventures in faith and fascinating discoveries...Learning about the Holy Spirit has never been this much fun!"
  
  Um, I am not sure I WANT learning about the Holy Spirit to be this much fun. And exactly what sort of full-color photos do you suppose it contains? I have to go home and look, to see if perhaps they captured part of the Great Three-in-One on film.
  
  A friend gave these to my kids in a big bag of books her two teenagers had outgrown; even when she handed them to me, she almost seemed embarrassed by them. She is NOT some sort of religious freak, and I am sure these books are very informative and well-put-together; they’re just not my boys’ cup of tea.
  Or Communion wine.
  
  
• Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography. By rights, this is not mine to give away. The drummer in H’s band lent it to him more than two years ago, and it has been riding around in MY car for the past ten or twelve months because H keeps “forgetting” to take it to return to B. I find it on the floor, in the hatchback, in the CD storage case, under the seats, and jammed in the glove compartment. My boys have stepped on it, sat on it, and dropped Cheerios and juice boxes on it. I am donating the damn thing just to get it the hell out of my car.

So there you have it. The Great Weed of 2007.
Of course, with the half dozen books I dragged home already last week from the sale, I am almost even already. We do NOT believe in Zero Population Growth, or Zero Book Growth, in THIS family.