BIG Movie & Book Buys

☘️ Happy St Patrick's Day🍀 from us and Maxine (photo below).

First, braggin' rights to many fellow bloggers, who correctly named Big as the 1988 movie featuring Zoltar, the antique fortune telling machine in the previous post.

Correct first response was from Kathy followed by Ginny, Emma (mimmylyn), Rita, Michelle and Denise. Also, braggin'rights twice to Emma for providing this synopsis: Of course I remember the movie. It was Big. The first time it was shown was when the boy was at the carnival and wanted to ride a ride that a girl he had a crush on. He was unable to ride because he was too short. He came upon the Zoltar machine and made a wish to be big. The next morning he was indeed 'big'. He spent the rest of the movie waiting to see Zoltar again so he could be back to normal. When he saw Zoltar at the end of the movie his wish is again granted.

Big starred actor Tom Hanks who also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. However, at the 1989, 61st Academy Awards he lost to Dustin Hoffman who won for Rain Man. Ironically the late actor Gene Hackman was also a Best Actor nominee for the film, Mississippi Burning.

My total book sale purchases were under $10

The annual book sale of Friends of the Nashua Public Library was a huge success. We attended the Friday night preview which was quite hectic with book sellers looking for bargain buys. I bought a couple of books the first night, David O. Selznick's Hollywood and a Simple Weeknight Meals cookbook (America's Test Kitchen. It's not that we needed another recipe book, but this oversize softcover is similar to a couple of other ATK books, so it fit well in the bookcase.

Always room for an ATK cookbook

On Saturday, I volunteered for 6 hours basically tidying up books and adding more to the sale tables from the overflow books stored below. It's amazing how tired you can get bending up and down after doing so for a couple of hours. After that, sorting and re-filling tables in the paperback fiction room was much easier. Boxes there were all displayed on tables and it was just a matter of condensing and filling in empty spaces in boxes.

The other books shown in the above photo were all purchased Sunday, the final sale day, when I went to return some borrowed books and to browse the sale (without volunteering) just as a buyer. 

My 2-day buying total was $9.50 and that was a definite bargain when compared to the $193 suggested retail cost for all six books. Most hardcovers with the exception of very large oversized ones (like Selznick's Hollywood) were priced at $2; paperbacks were priced at $1 or 50 cents. So, you can readily see why book sellers always attend this sale in large numbers. The Friends' goal is to clear out as many books as possible since more will be donated in time for the 2026 sale.

The official sales tally hasn't been announced yet, but I heard from other Friends members (in the know) that Preview Night sales were around $17,000. This was before the general buying public shopped all day Saturday and half-day Sunday. (Once it's known, I'll share the total in a future post.)

Maxine was all decked out in her finest greenery for a St. Patrick's Day celebration which will take place at the Hudson Senior Center this week.

She's a permanent resident at this senior center where we meet to play dominoes weekly. There's no resident housing there; Maxine hangs out in the center office when not celebrating a holiday and never misses the chance to dress for the occasion. In reply to a blogger's comment, it does look like she's holding an angry stuffed cabbage 🥬.