On the lower level of the Homewood Public Library are three adjoining rooms stocked with literary treasures for sale at astonishingly cheap prices. The Friends Bookstore, staffed by some 20 volunteers, is one of the more enjoyable and rewarding places in the area to spend an afternoon. It offers an eclectic inventory of used books, magazines, audiobooks, DVDs, videotapes, CDs, cassettes, and record albums. Most books sell for less than $2; magazines usually go for a dime. Paperbacks are 25 and 50 cents; CDs are $1, record albums and cassettes are a quarter, while videotapes go for 50 cents.

Opened in 1987, the store’s collection consists of donations as well as books discarded by the Homewood Library primarily due to “wear and tear,” explains Deborah Fout, the Homewood Public Library director. Fout discovered that worn-out books were ideal for her young children, who could draw and color in them. “I think that’s why mothers like to buy those,” says Fout.

Multiple copies of once popular books are often relegated to the Friends store. (Five percent of most libraries’ inventory is discarded yearly, according to Fout.) Money from bookstore sales goes to the Homewood Library to purchase equipment and new books as well as toward events such as Summer Reading Programs. (The bookstore raised nearly $40,000 in 2011.) The customer base includes not only moms, kids, and bookworms but also book dealers and teachers bringing their classes in to shop.

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The store has become so popular that a bookcase loaded with used books for sale has been erected near the library’s circulation desk, allowing patrons to shop when the Friends Bookstore is closed. A large downstairs storage room full of unfiled new arrivals is popular with browsers. “We just decided to finally let people come in here and look for books,” says longtime volunteer Dorothy Brown, a soft-spoken elderly woman who is only too happy to help. “We’re very fortunate to have this much space,” says Brown, whose charm and devotion earned her a 2011 Jefferson County Library Association Award.

In the biography section, conservative Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly’s The No Spin Zone sits next to Nothin’ But Good Times Ahead by liberal political writer Molly Ivins. On the other side of O’Reilly is It Takes a Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bill Clinton’s My Life sits next to The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories. Occupying the slot next to the ex-president is a memoir by former First Lady Barbara Bush.

Another fascinating title is Moscow Madness: Crime, Corruption, and One Man’s Pursuit of Profit in the New Russia, which tells the true story of an American who launched a Miller Beer distribution company in Moscow in the early 1990s, only to discover the difficulty of achieving success when forced to deal with the Russian mafia. A complete set of World Book Encyclopedias is available for a paltry $5.

The magazine section features Sports Illustrated, Hot Rod, Road & Track, Golf Digest, Yachting, Wine Spectator, a tall stack of The New Yorker, Smithsonian National Review, and Opera News. Brown brags about the store’s National Geographic collection, which she promises is in chronological order.

I picked up copies of Failure Is Not An Option by NASA flight director Gene Kranz, who coordinated the first moon landing, and who was a key figure in the Apollo 13 adventure, Safire’s New Political Dictionary: The Defining Guide to the New Language of Politics by William Safire, and various books on European racecars. One of my favorite purchases is The Ultimate Spy Book by Keith Melton, with forewords by former CIA director William Colby and former Soviet KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin.

Above the shelves labeled Occult, Numerology, Astrology, Natural Healing, Homeopathy, and Herbs is an area labeled “Religion,” which includes a slightly perplexing section referred to as “Religious Fiction.” Further down is the “Personal Relations” shelf, which includes books such as When You’re Loved One Has Alzheimer’s, an edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Childcare, and Intended for Pleasure: Sex Technique and Sexual Fulfillment in Christian Marriage. The Friends Bookstore is indeed full of surprises.

The store is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Visit http://homewoodpubliclibrary.org/bookstore or call 205-332-6600 for more information. &