Bookstore Wanderings

I adore bookstores, fullstop. I have recently realized, however, that my love for used bookstores differs greatly from my love for the regular flavor.

At a regular bookstore you can walk in, ask if a certain book is available, browse the new releases, and lovingly finger hardcover books you can't afford. You can do all this while listening to jazz music and sipping your hipster coffee. You can instantly find that philosophy book you are really only going to flip through, and flip through it quietly while eying the cute guy over in "Poetry." (OK, so maybe that's only me. Or maybe I'm the only one who's going to admit it, at least.) The point is, at a regular bookstore, it's intellectual heaven. Even if what you end up walking out with is the latest teenage vampire romp (and that I'm *not* admitting to).

At a used bookstore, it's an entirely different experience. First of all, most used bookstores I've been in are musty. They're cramped, and oddly organized. They're at the mercy of whatever box of books has been dropped off, so their collections are inconsistent, nonsensical, and delightfully jarring. At a used bookstore I was in today, the entire collected works of Shakespeare were leaning against several books by William Shatner.

What makes these bookstores fun for me are not just the ridiculously low prices. I love the detective game that becomes shopping in them. You cannot go in looking for something in particular--I promise you that you will not find it. You have to search through the stacks, looking simply at your options, and often what you find is bizarre and wonderfully silly.

My adventure today unearthed a murder mystery about tea (Death by Darjeeling) and several fairy books from the 70s. Would I have found these in a regular bookstore?? Probably not. Mostly because most anyone with any sense wouldn't buy either. But for two dollars each, can you really resist?