(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Since our big move is coming up, I have been scouring the city for moving boxes. U-Haul charges big bucks for theirs, craigslist posters demand $1 per box, and Wal-Mart insists the only way to get your hands on their boxes is to come between midnight and 1 a.m. So, I have taken to Dumpster diving. I've fished piles of boxes out of a Dumpster behind Old Country Buffet - I've found some good ones, but they're usually a bit dirty and smelly (kind of like the restaurant - ha ha). So, in hopes of some cleaner boxes, I drove around a strip mall that's down the street from my house. Guess what I found in the Dumpster behind Half-Price Books? Well, I did discover a couple of good boxes, but I also found a pile of books! Not old, dingy paperbacks either, but like-new trade paperbacks. Being the book lover I am, I really wanted to scoop them all up and drop them off at places where they would get some love (like the library, which is begging for book donations). It felt criminal to rescue only one book - Wally Lamb's I Know This Much Is True - but I was too scared to grab more (because you know stores always have security cameras watching over their precious garbage). As it was, I hid my stolen novel underneath some boxes just in case.

I know Half-Price Books isn't unique in throwing away "old" books - Sam Houston posted this article not too long ago about Barnes & Noble. These books weren't deliberately destroyed like the ones at B& N; still, when there is a library a couple miles down the road with posters in every window asking for books, you just have to wonder.