Sorters Seeking Sellable Books to Benefit Library

Loyal book sorters Susan Buchanan and Pat Cardenas are seeking sellers for the annual Swampscott library book sale — the group’s biggest fundraiser.

By sellers, they mean sellable recent fiction and nonfiction. Popular genres include biography and gardening and history and contemporary politics.

Susan and Pat, hard working volunteers and Friends of the Swampscott Library, sort and haul and box and shelve books at the library several hours each week during the summer.

On a recent weekday morning they were doing what they typically do, sorting through a few hundred donated books in the library lobby before hauling them to the book sale room on the third floor.

About half the books they sort through are keepers, books that can be sold at the annual book sale.

The ones that are not kept, including old text books, magazines and books that are in poor condition, get donated to Get Books, a service that picks them up.

Susan and Pat have been volunteering as sorters for seven or eight years. Both are Swampscott moms and book lovers.

Among books they have recently read are "The Language of Flowers.”

Pat just finished The Light Between Oceans. It’s set in Australia, the story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife and a boat that washed ashore with a dead man and a crying baby.

This book certainly is an example of a keeper, a book whose sale will help the library.

Susan and Pat are looking for more of the same.

It’s helpful to receive books that sell, much less helpful to receive books that are not sellable.

The annual Friends of the Swampscott Public Library book sale will start Friday, Sept. 20.

The Swampscott Public Library is located at 61 Burrill Street, 781-596-8867.