The Marshall Lyon County Library book sales have at least a half century of tradition, at least a half century of people buying books by the boxful.

I remember the sales that took place in the basement community room of the West Lyon Street facility. It’s where I got off to a good start in establishing a home library, one that’s being maintained with a total of about 500 books.

That sounds like a lot of books. I’ve been asked how many of them I’ve read. Actually I’ve read at least parts of almost all of them.

The book sales of 2023 bear a resemblance to the sales of the 1970s and 1980s. For one thing, there are still plenty of books. There are also good turnouts in the number of shoppers.

I went to last week’s sale on Saturday, the last day, to see if there might be one or two books I couldn’t live without. I found one. It’s a Saturday Evening Post treasury, filled with articles by some famous authors. It also has color pictures of some of the best Post covers.

When I took it home, I didn’t even have to decide what other book to take off my shelves. I placed the treasury at the top of a stack of classic old magazines (Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look and several others), which I have on the floor in a corner of my living room.

Those magazines are available for as little as $3 each in antique stores. Like the books in the book sale, they are still popular with the public.

Even though Saturday was the last day, shoppers still filled the community room. It was especially good to see that they included young people. It’s good that people still want books.

There’s something special about holding a book, magazine or newspaper. I believe it’s a better reading experience than reading something off a computer screen or tablet. There’s no distraction from all the clicking and dragging needed with electronic options.

One of the best things about real publications is that when you buy them you can own them forever. I’ve re-read some books that I remember from growing up. I find that I see them in a perspective that’s at least slightly different after many years. An example is George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The ending is the main thing I see differently. Years ago it didn’t make sense to have pigs become indistinguishable from human beings. It seemed far fetched.

Now I see Orwell’s point. It shows how easily those who attain power can become carbon copies of the ones they displaced. They use their power for personal gain.

Hopefully the young generation of 2023 has the same kind of opportunity to learn and grow through reading. They shouldn’t see reading as just something they have to do in school. Instead school assignments should just be a starting point. They should find favorite authors and read them. They should buy books that they might want to keep.

It’s vital that we continue to take an interest in the world around us, that people still have the curiosity to seek out the best in both fiction and non-fiction. That’s a huge part of what it means to be informed. We shouldn’t make assumptions based on the first thing we see or hear. We should go further than that and learn more.

If people don’t take the time to evaluate information, there are special interests who are more than happy to tell them what to think. In the 21st century we’ve started to hear the phrase “change the narrative”. It’s a bothersome phrase. It indicates that most of society can be conditioned to believe something through sophisticated marketing.

An event like a book sale shows that powers-that-be can’t automatically change the minds of everyone. Some of us still think for ourselves. Some of us still take the time to educate ourselves before making up our minds about any important topic.

We should want to know. We should choose good news sources in the same way people choose good books. Our freedom shouldn’t be taken for granted. It rests on having a well-informed general public.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent