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Discard

At a particularly low ebb, when our library fine woes were holding us back from borrowing books,  we stumbled towards the discard bin.  We had come all this way, on a ferry no less, and it seemed like we should leave the library with some books one way or the other.  "Let's make this trip as wholesome as possible!"  we said. We picked out some great reading material, a little shabby and a couple of pages loose or lost, but fine.  Claiming a handful of discards satiated, on some level, our need to stamp this excursion with some proof that we had been to the library and had made an attempt.



I am always drawn to a bargain.  $0.50 for hard covers and $0.25 for soft covers were good prices.

Also, besides getting a bargain and coming away full handed, I also felt a little like we were rescuing these books.  For whatever reason, it had been determined that these books needed to move along, but their goodness, their art, the work that they constituted demanded our attention.  Some of the books were not my thing.  Some were drastically out of date (a 2005 book on making money on the internet), but there were a few gems to me.  I like to think that the others are gems to others.

Discard implies reject, but in my experience, it is like a chance to claim something beautiful.
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