Friends of the Public Library- Sterling Heights

My intentions for this blog post were to review a used book store called K’s Book Exchange. But upon reaching my destination, I found that K’s had closed recently. So, I decided to visit another public library and check out its Friends Bookstore, as I did last week with Rochester Hills and Shelby Township. This time, I visited the Sterling Heights Public Library’s Friends Bookstore.

I have been to the Sterling Heights library many times. The library itself is huge. The Friends bookstore is large, as well. In fact, it is much bigger than both the Rochester Hills and Shelby Township stores.

    

To start, the store has a cart out front with sale books. Most of them were Christmas books, on sale for twenty-five cents. Inside, there were also tables full of sale books. These books were considered “red dot” items. Anything with a red dot is fifty percent off the sale price. Shoppers can also fill a plastic grocery bag with as many books as the bag can hold and only pay three dollars. The same goes for paper grocery bags, only costing five dollars. This is a great bargain- someone could easily fill a bag with ten or so books.

The rest of the Friends store was reasonably priced as well. All books, magazines, DVDs, VHSs, and audio books were under two dollars. Stock wise, there was an impressive collection of classics, many of which sported evidently older binding. Other types of books featured were romance, humor, large print, and a rather large section of cookbooks. There were a few audio books- both on cassette and CD- which was impressive. I rarely see audio books at other used book stores. Also, there was an extensive stock of Disney movies on VHS.

A big section of the store was dedicated to young adult books. Half of them were books withdrawn from the library’s collection- older books that don’t get checked out anymore. The other half was donations- newer books with more titles that I recognized. The young adult section was spread throughout the store, so I had to hunt a little to browse through everything. But, I was impressed by what I ended up finding.

Merchandise at the store seems to move in and out quickly. While I was there, there were about ten other people in the store at the same time. The Friends volunteers run an efficient store.

I was a bit disappointed to only find a single copy of Nancy Drew at Friends. This copy, though, was one of my favorites. The Secret of Shadow Ranch was an older copy, in good condition. It sat amongst other mystery series of that era- including The Hardy Boys and The Dana Girls Mysteries (also written by Carolyn Keene).

In all, the Friends of the Sterling Heights Library had a good store. I would recommend this store to anyone looking for new titles as well as looking to help out the local library. I know that I will return in the future.