Buy the Book

This Thursday, nearly 15,000 people will queue up outside the Miami-Dade Main Library. What’s with this sudden surge in literacy? After all, Miami was recently ranked the ninth dumbest city in America – an honor partially based on our city’s fledging book sales. Yet every year, the 305’s voracious readers – all 15,000 of them – line up to be the first at the library’s annual Book Sale. For the past 10 years, thousands of donated books, DVDs, and even video games are sold at blow-out prices. You can score current titles such as Jay-Z’s Decoded and the latest from Stieg Larsson as well as rare finds such as the first Argentine edition of The Catcher and the Rye, all for $1 to $5.
Proceeds benefit annual programs such as Summer Reading, the Art of Storytelling workshops, and International Festival. And if everyone spent a measly $10 and stocked a home library of good reads, maybe Miami could escape its reputation of being a confederacy of dunces.

Dec. 9-12, 9 a.m., 2010