You may know that I have collected books for a long time. Maybe “collected” is too mild of a word. A better word might be “amassed”. I don’t think “hoarded” is a good word because I am pretty discriminatory in what I purchase.

The books have to have one of three qualities. They have to be signed by the author, be old or rare, or be of particular interest to me.

It started decades ago when I used to walk during a lunch break from my office to Second Story Books at Dupont Circle. They always have a few hundred books outside that they sell for $ to $5, and I liked rummaging through them. I always figured that these books were at their last hurrah. If no one bought them, they were to be trashed or recycled. Now and then, I would see a book that the author had signed, and those copies, I thought, should be rescued. So I bought them and took them home. Sometimes, I read them. Mostly, I didn’t.

They really began piling up, and that’s when I decided that I should try selling them. I set up a separate bank account and eventually decided that the proceeds of the book sales should go to pay for the education of grandchildren. So far, funds have been used (upon request) for preschool and summer camp.

At any rate, I keep going from book store to library sale, etc., and, truth is, I buy more than I sell, although I pay, on average, about $4 a book, and I sell books for an average of about $30 each.

But some books sell for much more, in the hundreds or even thousands (I usually regret selling these after they have left the house). Of course, finding a book worth, say, over $100 doesn’t happen every week for all sorts of reasons. But, the past two weeks have been different. I have paid a total of $36 for the following valuable signed copies (all in excellent condition):

(1) Keeping At It by Paul Volcker

(2) Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella (president of Microsoft – I did not know that)

(3) Working by Robert Caro

(4) The Sense of Reality by Isaiah Berlin

(5) Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens

(6)  Conflict by David Petraeous

(7) When the Center Held by Donald Rumsfeld

Maybe this doesn’t interest you, but it fascinates me. Just like it fascinates me that I can look at a bookcase in our family room and see 7 books signed by Clinton, 5 signed by Nixon, 10 signed by Carter, and one each by each of the Bushes, Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump.

And, in the same book case, Lech Walesa, Ehud Barak, Margaret Thatcher, and Nicholas Sarkozy, among others. I just find it all fun.