Thank you, Victoria, for supporting literacy by supporting the sa国际传媒 book sale. The thousands of people who bought bags and boxes and armloads of books at the Victoria Curling Club on the weekend spent $158,150, bringing the total raised for literacy projects to $2 million over 17 years. As always, eager buyers lined up for hours to hunt for gems among the more than 500,000 donated books, some even camping out overnight.
That money will go to school libraries and groups all over the Island to encourage reading.
Of course, Victorians not only helped by buying the books, but by donating them. On drop-off days before the sale, a steady stream of cars unloaded box after box of books. Sorting those books were hundreds of volunteers, many of whom show up year after year to help out.
On the sale days, they kept the tabletops stocked as buyers whittled away at the bewildering array of titles.
The books that were not sold didn鈥檛 go to waste. On Monday, schools and non-profit groups carted away loads of them for free. The rest will be sold to a wholesaler, with those proceeds added to the donation total.
If you added some titles to your home library over the weekend, we hope you find hours of enjoyment between those covers. And you can take extra satisfaction in knowing you helped others learn the lifelong fascination of reading.
