By happy accident today I discovered a new used bookstore. The wife and I were swimming at the pool and the wife got into a conversation with another swimmer. She mentioned a used bookstore about thirty miles away.
Of course I had to go check it out. After we got home from the pool, and I got some household chores out of the way, and a short nap, we were off.
The drive to the bookstore was scenic as it is out in the country. Lot of curvy roads though, and after a while it got a little monotonous.
The bookstore itself is attached to one of the local libraries in that all proceeds from the store go into supporting the local library. I can get behind that.
Just after we entered the shop, a group of ladies entered. They were a reading group and were out and about in the town and came across the bookstore. Another woman entered around the same time with her service dog. Normally service dogs are ‘on duty’ and you shouldn’t pet them, but the owner said it was okay to pay attention to the dog and give him pets. His name was Tchaikovsky (like the composer) and was very well-behaved. I gave him a few pets and he seemed content.
Spent a lot of time just wandering around the bookstore and looking at everything they had, as one should do in a used bookstore. They had a fairly good classical literature section and I ended up grabbing a copy of Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann. They had a good sized fiction section, a very large mystery section, and a lot of non-fiction of various types. They had a small children’s section but I managed to find a copy of Max The Mighty by Rodman Philbrick, a sequel to Freak The Mighty. They also had a small science fiction / fantasy section but I found copies of Project Pendulum and The Stochastic Man by Robert Silverberg.
I gave a final pet to Tchaikovsky, paid for my books and we left.
It was great being back in my element. It has been months since I was last in a bookstore. There is nothing quite as exciting as looking over shelves of books and finding a hidden gem among the stacks. Except for maybe buying said gem, taking it home, and finding a nice quiet space to sit and read it. The only thing better would be going to the library. And chocolate chip cookies.
Does the younger generation even go to bookstores and libraries any more? I’m going to assume so since otherwise bookstores / libraries would have completely disappeared from the face of the planet by now. May that day never arrive.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum