I've been on a mission lately to purge stuff, starting with books. Most of my books are in stacks and piles (bookshelves ran out long ago). Over the past couple of month's I'd accumulated about a 4' stack to purge and last weekend we took them to Half-Price books. They don't give much but will take everything, not pick and choose. In the past I tried easy things--a note here, taking them to guild, talking to friends, taking selected books to local used book places (there are a couple of nice ones near campus)--all with little to no luck. When I think about the time I'd spend to try to sell them online, Half-Price Book's payment looks pretty good.
While waiting for them to evaluate my books (a shopping cart full!), I found a treasure to replace them. I find it extremely hard to part with books, this book is proving to be wonderful consolation.
It's part of a series. Others they had were on the 1950s and the cheongsam. This one really sang to me. It's got pages full-page photos (scans?) of fabrics, photos, images from books (I have an original book full of illustrations like the ones in the top photo on the left--this takes it a step further), line drawings, some showing embroidery stitches. One spread almost exactly matches a book illustration of a costume with a photo of a woman in the same costume.
The book came with a disk--I haven't looked at it yet. It's tempting to think of sending some of the fabric designs to one of those custom fabric printing sites and being able to have them to use.
So far I'm resisting looking to see what else is in the series.
