Bookworms will soon have plenty of reading material to chew on, with the Wagga Rotary Book Fair making a return to the showgrounds this weekend.
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The Rotary Club of Wagga has two year's worth of second-hand books to hawk, due to last year's fair cancelled due to the coronavirus.
It was a crushing blow for the club, since it is typically the biggest fundraising event on their calendar, with 2019's fair drawing in about 3000 visitors and raising $56,000 for charity.
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Fair organiser Graham Russell said this year had been donated more books than they could possibly handle, and would be bringing them to the showgrounds in a packed semi-trailer on Thursday.
Mr Russell said it was a mammoth undertaking at the best of times, and that the organisers would have their work cut out for them especially this year due to all the COVID regulations.
"We're trying to get people move through fairly quickly because in other years when we've opened the doors at 8 o'clock there's between 200-300 people waiting to go in. You wouldn't believe the power of a second hand book," Mr Russell said.
"We've got good quality books and we've got a whole lot of them, so if people want to come and buy a heap of books that'd be great."
Mr Russell is quite the avid bookworm himself, and he reckons he goes through about three books a week.
Another voracious reader is Rotarian Vicky Donoghue, who has spent the past two years sorting through towering stacks of books in preparation for the upcoming book fair.
"We come here every week for a whole year to sort books, and this is our last Tuesday before the big day. The trucks coming on Thursday to pick them up to take them down to the hall, so it's all on now," Ms Donoghue said.
"We've got two year's worth of books so they won't all be going, so we need lots of people to come down and buy lots of books."
The money raised from this year's book fair will be going to assorted charities and causes around Wagga.
The book fair will kick off at the Kyeamba Smith Hall at the Wagga Showgrounds on Saturday from 8am to 5pm.
The following day it will open at 9am and wrap up at 3pm.
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