A new school of cultural criticism has called into question the genre of sports comedy for its peculiar exclusion of the Wesley Snipes classic Major League. Reconceptualize rarefied genres with today's Groupon: for $5, you get $10 worth of used books, CDs, DVDs, and more at the Mt. Lebanon Book Cellar.
The Book Cellar escapes the curse afflicting many book fairs of being littered with endless copies of Dianetics and Windows 95 for Dummies through support from vivacious readers whose donations have created an intriguingly eclectic selection of literary milestones, pulp-fiction treats, and fascinating non-fiction. With the store's pleasant pricing, your $10 voucher could have you walking home with shelves' worth of material. Kindle and iPad owners can pick up analog copies of their digital favorites, since coverless tablets offer no way to broadcast to your coworkers that you're reading Nabokov.
The Mt. Lebanon Book Cellar is the brainchild of librarian mastermind Cynthia K. Richey, who created a potent way to combat the library's dwindling government funding by converting the basement into a store where your purchases support the Mt. Lebanon Public Library. Make sure to bring your collection of conquered books and DVDs to donate so other knowledge-hungry readers can spend the afternoon scouting for that perfect illiteracy buster.
Reviews
Library director Cynthia Richey won a New York Times Librarian Award in 2006, and the Mt. Lebanon Book Cellar has been featured in both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and on LISNews:
- [Cynthia] has been able to make sure the library's use grows despite a declining population and unreliable funding. – Laura Pace, Post-Gazette
- ...The Book Cellar, a permanent used-book store, was created in several rooms downstairs from the main library, through the efforts of Friends of the Library volunteers to staff it. – birdie, LISNews