With January and February weather settling in, this weekend is a great time for the Missouri River Regional Library to host its third Pop-Up Book Sale.
So curl up with a good book or two or more.
The sale, which began Friday and raises funds for MRRL and the ABLE Learning Center, is intended to help clear space for storage for books to be used in the annual used book sale the library holds each March at the St. Martins Knights of Columbus building.
The pop-up sale continues 9 a.m.-5 p.m. today and 1-5 p.m. Sunday in the library's main branch, 214 Adams St.
ABLE was established in 1985 to promote literacy in Jefferson City and surrounding communities. At the time, state and federal sources showed significant numbers of functionally illiterate people in the area. Data also showed increasing numbers of high school dropouts.
Offered books this weekend consist mostly of used fiction, mystery and romance novels.
About 40 adults patiently waited for MRRL staff to open the doors to the Gallery Room at noon Friday.
At $2 each for hardbound and $1 for paperbacks, it didn't take long for Mary Wilde to select all the books she could carry. She quickly finished searching and carried arm-loads of books - written by her favorite working authors James Patterson, Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, Tom Clancy and others - to a small table at the door for check-out.
"I like reading," Wilde said. "Between reading, quilting and grandkids, that's my life."
Books by those authors are "hot items," library Assistant Director Betty Hagenhoff said.
The goal for this three-day pop-up sale is to reduce the library's used-book inventory by about 360 boxes, about the same volume during the first pop-up sale a year ago. Each of MRRL's book boxes (about 20 inches long and 16 wide) can hold about 20 hardbound books or 40-50 paperback novels, Hagenhoff said.
"We found that in the March sale, we struggled to have enough room to get them all out," she said. "We constantly restock the tables."
So, even if you can't make it to the pop-up sale until Sunday, there should be quite a variety of books from which to choose, she added.
The annual sale is scheduled for March 13-16.