Friends of the Shepherdstown Library member Nancy Stewart, center, talks about a book with Martinsburg resident Tania Kirkman, left, and Kirkman's son at the Friends of Shepherdstown Library Winter Weekend Booksale on Saturday. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — The Friends of the Shepherdstown Library (FOSL) held their Winter Weekend Booksale in the Shepherdstown Public Library over the weekend.

Hundreds of gently-used books filled tables in the library’s Commons Room, separated by genre. And, for the book lovers who visited the sale, the selection of books and variety of genres offered proved extensive.

“There are some very nice books on sale here! It’s unusual to see this much on local history at a book sale,” said Charles Town resident Mark Stac. “It really is a good sale, especially for homeschoolers.”

Stac filled two FOSL tote bags full of books on local history for himself, his wife and their three children to benefit from. He was thrilled to be able to take advantage of the book sale deal to purchase a FOSL tote bag for $35, which then could be filled up with any of the books in the sale for that price.

“I had read about the sale previously, but it just happened to work out that it was on a day that I was dropping off a book,” said Janet Stokes, of Martinsburg. “It’s a great event!”

Janet Stokes, of Martinsburg, looks through a collection of books at the Friends of Shepherdstown Library Winter Weekend Booksale on Saturday. Tabitha Johnston

Stokes was an art teacher for many years, prior to her move to Martinsburg, which was reflected in the selection of books she was purchasing. Her hands were full of pop-up books, along with a craft book on how to make pop-up cards.

“Pop-ups are really big now!” Stokes said. “You can even buy bouquets that are pop-ups.”

Martinsburg resident Tania Kirkman was also pleased with her finds at the sale, with her favorite being “Tombstone Inscriptions: Jefferson County, W.Va 1687-1879.”

“I like funerary. I don’t know what that might be useful for at some point in the future, so I’m glad to have found it,” Kirkman said, mentioning she has had this interest for about 20 years. “I’m just fascinated with cemeteries and death and the history of mourning practices. Having an awareness of death gives me a more positive outlook on life. You appreciate it all the more!”

FOSL member Nancy Stewart said the local history section proved to be one of the most popular sections at this sale, due to the excellent selection of local history books donated to FOSL over the last few months.

Book lovers shop for novels at the Friends of Shepherdstown Library Winter Weekend Booksale on Saturday. Tabitha Johnston

“It’s going really well! There’s a lot of volume and a lot of people that are finding books that they want to use to fill in their collection,” Stewart said, mentioning this proved to be the case with many of the genres, such as legal thrillers. “We just had somebody who found a book by John Grisham who said, ‘Oh, I haven’t read this one! I’ve wanted this!'”

According to FOSL board member Kathy Loftin, rather than holding one giant book sale every year like it used to do in the War Memorial Building, FOSL holds two or three smaller book sales a year. The set up and tear down now is much more manageable for the 501c(3) nonprofit organization, which has donated all of its funds to the library over its 30-year lifetime.

“Rather than have to pay a hefty rent and deal with a lot of set up and tear down, they decided that, since the library had the space here, to just have multiple sales per year,” Loftin said.

The smaller size of the book sales, Loftin said, proved to be no issue to book lovers, due to the high quality of items featured in the sale.

“The quality of donations has been particularly good. There was not a lot of junk that we had to throw out, because they were in such bad shape that we couldn’t sell them,” Loftin said. “We specify that donations must be in good shape, because it would otherwise add a lot of work for the volunteers to do, to have to weed out and throw away all of the bad ones. We also require that no textbooks or dictionaries or encyclopedias or magazines be donated, as they so quickly become outdated.”