Blurbs

I have started volunteering at my local library a few days a week for a few hours at a time. Right now I am taking donated books that have been priced by the assistant director of the library and entering information about them into librarybooksales.org to raise money for the library fund. My job includes looking through the book to find basic information such as publisher, copyright date, whether on not it is a first edition, etc. I also have to flip through it to figure out what it is about so I can enter key words. Finally, I have to write a little blurb about the condition of the book.

The blurb is the challenge. What can one say in just a few sentence that will catch the attention of the potential buyer and rope them in? It is a creative challenge. This also got me to thinking about whether it is easier to compose a shorter or a longer piece of writing in general. Also, what do people value about books? Doing this project also gets me to thinking about the life of a book. I have held books in my hand that we're published as early as 1905. Where has that book been, who else has held it in their hands, and what did it mean to each person who turned it's pages?

Books are magical.
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A couple of "blurbs" of writing from my archives:

On an Amtrac Train to Providence
10 minutes away from New Haven, CT
10/5/03

Loving is a complicated word
A verb
An adjective
An emotion, of epic proportions

On an Amtrack Train Somewhere in Connecticut
10/5/03

TAKE ME SOMEWHERE
FAR AWAY
TO BE MYSELF
TO MEET MYSELF
TO FIND MYSELF
Mellow
Meandering
Marvelously happy
Wandering
No longer waiting for life to happen to me
Instead, happening to life
HUNGRILY CONSUMING IT
Incapable of being satiated
ALWAYS ACCOMPLISHING
Deliciously Devouring more
more
more
more