Books of Steel
The Library Inherits A Special Collection
When the wonderful patron walked into the library recently and asked us if we’d accept her large collection of Danielle Steel books as a donation, we were, of course, delighted!
While Steel is no longer as popular as she once was, and other romance/rom-com authors like Kristin Hanna are now dominating that genre, she’s still a draw and if nothing else will sell well at our annual book sale in July.
But when the patron said “large collection” I had envisioned a couple dozen books.
Not 142.
That’s a lot of Danielle Steel!
By our calculations, Steel has written 165 fiction novels. We leapt into action, ordering them by publication date and then creating a list of which we needed to complete our collection.
My completest / collector brain quickly overrode my common sense brain (as it usually does - my common sense brain has it rough) and I put the word out into the community that we were looking to complete our set.
I found one in a nearby Little Free Library, and just today, someone else brought in another one to donate that they said they found at a thrift shop for us. That means we’re up to 144.
I’ve been asked these past few days what we’ll do with the whole collection once we finish it. Practically speaking, we have neither the space nor the demand to keep the whole set in our collection. So, I’m thinking the best course of action will be to Marketplace the whole shabang and see if I can find someone interested in the entire set. Failing that, perhaps there’s some collectors out there who want to fill in missing volumes for their own collection. And then, of course, the rest will be lovingly packed up and sold at our annual book sale in July.
However it shakes out, the result will be to benefit the library, as the original and generous donor wished.
Giving up a whole collection like that is never easy. Books, and particular authors, that we fall in love with can become not just part of your life but a part of who you are, and putting a collection like this into our hands - entrusting us with something so sacred - is an honor. She was, in essence, giving over a part of herself.
And to that end, her collection is in good hands!
So, by the time you read this, we might be down to needing only a few more to complete the collection. But if you have some Danielle Steel you’d be willing to donate, reach out either by email or in the comments below and we can see if they are ones that we need! Let’s bring the community together to finish her collection, shall we!
Subscriber Drive Update: Hi everyone! Incredibly, our subscriber drive to get us to 600 is working! Hello to everyone who is new to our community! We are only 13 away from hitting out goal by the end of April. Please share this or any post and tell your friends! We’re so thrilled you’re all with us!