Starting today and running through Sunday, the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library are hosting their 40th annual Big Book Sale, at Fort Mason. Tons of books (around 135,000) ripe for the picking, all priced slightly under the cost you'd pay at a commercial used book store (most between $2-4, with some at $8 and a few at $10) -- and on Sunday, all books will be a dollar or less (at 12:30, the books get cut by 50%, and by 2, they sell 'em $5 a grocery bag). Yowza!

For those of you who love the antiquarian hunt, there's also a separate section for the "Best of Book Bay," with rare and unusual books (between $20 and $250), including the first ever printed short story by Ernest Gaines (of "A Lesson Before Dying") in a SF State collection, and a rare collection of Matisse prints from 1958 (the most expensive, at $1800), among other gems.

Other events include a silent auction of artworks from the Reversing Vandalism show created out of the books damaged in a hate crime perpetrated by an anti-gay reader at the SF Main Library, and a reading of banned books all day Saturday by local San Francisco literati, including Leah Garchik and Joan Ryan of the Chron. SFist's dying just to go in and smell that great used-book aroma (they should bottle that stuff).