‘A treasure hunt’: Legendary Book Sale set to end this Sunday
SHEPHERDSTOWN — The Legendary Book Sale will be coming to a close this weekend, after opening to the public last Thursday evening in the War Memorial Building.
Staffed by Shepherdstown Community Club (SCC) members and other community-minded individuals, the 11-day sale will be open today and tomorrow, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., with the sale proceeds going toward caring for the SCC’s two historic properties — the War Memorial Building and Morgan’s Grove Park.
“We’ve had record sales so far — it’s just been rolling out the door,” said SCC President Jennifer Wabnitz on Saturday morning, attributing this success to the club’s advertising the sale in print and social media.
For book lovers, the draw of the sale is unsurprising, considering the wide variety of books displayed by genre and priced at low rates. Today and Saturday, these prices will remain the same as they have been throughout the sale: $4 for a hardback book, $3 for a paperback book and $1 for a children’s book. But on Sunday, the sale’s closing day, the pricing will be a steal, with $5 being charged per bag of books.
“I’m a reader, so I’m looking for just anything,” said Shepherdstown resident Margaret Rose Peterson, mentioning she had already found a biography and some novels that she would be taking home with her on Saturday morning. “I’m not a mystery reader, but other than that, I like to read across a lot of genres. It’s a treasure hunt, to see what I can find.”
Peterson noted she appreciates that the sale proceeds go to a worthy cause. For her family, the War Memorial Building in particular holds great historical importance, as it served as her family’s church building, when her family and other congregants from New Street United Methodist Church split off to form a church within the Methodist Episcopal Church, South denomination.
“After the Civil War, they built this building and it became the Methodist Church, South. This is where my family went to church,” Peterson said of the local offshoot of the denomination, which merged back with New Street UMC’s denomination, the United Methodist Church, in 1939. “They reunited in the 1940s and decided to meet at New Street, because it was a larger space. When they rejoined, my great uncle was the person behind purchasing this building, to turn it into the men’s club. He was one of the founding fathers of the men’s club, [which later became coed and was renamed as the Shepherdstown Community Club].”
While the Legendary Book Sale is the one book sale Peterson has consistently frequented since its founding 15 years ago, other book lovers happened upon the sale, purely by chance.
“I came to Shepherdstown for Freedoms Run,” said Bill Clifford, of Virginia, who ran the event’s 5k earlier Saturday morning. “I got a flier for this book sale in one of the shops, and so I thought I’d check it out! I’m getting a stack of books, regarding the oceans and environmentalism. There are some great books here!”