I know that this isn't going to come as any kind of surprise to anyone who reads my blog regularly, but I love books...So it's also not going to come as a surprise that I love bookstores... and secondhand bookstores even more. In some ways I actually like secondhand bookstores more than new bookstores.
There's just something about a secondhand bookstore... the way it smells, the way it looks, the way it feels...
They always smell like old books... that beautiful spicy smell of old paper, and, I'm assuming, bookbinding glue... new books just don't have that smell... they smell more of chemicals, and it's a fainter smell... old books just smell good...
Sure the paper is yellower and secondhand books aren't always in pristine condition, but I can't help myself, I always have to look.
I went out for a walk this morning to take some shots for tomorrow's Montage, and finally took myself into one of the secondhand bookstores in North Adelaide that I've been promising myself that I would vist for over a year, and, until today, I never have.
At some stage, I'm pretty sure the shop in question was actually somebody's house, it just had that feeling about it... and the main space in the shop just felt like at one point it had been a living room... from the decorative molding around the ceiling, to the open fireplace... it just felt very homey.
Another thing that I love about secondhand bookstores, they're quiet... very, very quiet... in new bookstores you have people talking, sales assistants serving people, children... but, for whatever reason, in a secondhand bookstore, even when there are three or four people in there, it's still silent. And I like that... sure, sometimes it feels a little too quiet... like any little noise you happen to make is amplified a million times, but there's something about browsing through books in near silence (in the case of the bookstore this morning, my browsing was accompanied by classical music, which was quite pleasant too)...
And you never know what you're going to get in a secondhand bookstore... sometimes you can search the shelves from top to bottom and come away with nothing, sometimes you find something amazing, a book you remember fondly from your past, something you've been searching for or something that you wouldn't otherwise have read in a million years.
I picked up the second and third Harry Potter books secondhand... before I'd even read the first one I think... I'd heard of this whole Harry Potter phenomenon and when I saw them in the secondhand store I figured it was as good a reason as any to read them... the rest, as they say, is history.
While I was wandering around this morning I found myself wondering why people had gotten rid of the books on the shelves... what had made them say "no, I don't want this anymore"... and then sold it to the secondhand bookstore. I know that when I had the massive clearout of my books a few years back there were two reasons that I added books to the "to be sold" pile... firstly, in some cases I'd never read the book, even though it sounded good at the time... for whatever reason, I'd just never gotten around to it... and the second reason was that I had read the book, and it just hadn't grabbed me as something I needed to keep.
Actually, even though I haven't been into the secondhand bookstore that I sold a large number of my books to very often since, I went in there today, and while I was browsing, I looked cautiously around the shelves and wondered if any of those books were the ones that I gave away... and if not, then where were those books now... who had taken them home and read them and possibly loved them more than I had.
I could be wrong, but I think that a lot of the people who would sell their books to a secondhand bookstore would be doing it because they love books... it certainly isn't for the money... I think I made a grand total of about $50 all up after trying to sell my books to three or four different bookstores (and trust me, I culled a LOT of books from my collection)... and in the end a bunch of them got donated to charity because I couldn't sell them for love nor money... mostly money.
Each of those books on the shelf in a secondhand bookstore was once part of someone's life... even if, like some of the books I sold, they weren't a major part, they still spent time here... and some of them were possibly on their third or fourth life, since I know I sent a bunch of books back to the store that I'd originally bought there.
If those secondhand books could talk...
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4 comments:
Years ago when people gave books they would inscribe them with messages, nobody really does that anymore so when you get secondhand books nowadays sometimes they look so new you wouldn't know they had a previous owner. When I give books as gifts i always write something inside, it personalizes it and adds some history. If tha book ever wanders away into a strangers hands they'll be able to see the dated message and wonder who were these people. I'm sure nowadays the dealers would say it decreases the resale value and would probably not accept selling books written in.
We have a giant 60 year old Atlas of the World at my grandma's which over the past 50 years our family has been writing messages in. Some are like letters, others are silly things written by us kids with pictures. Books have a history and we're part of it - I just wish people would continue to personalize a book by inscribing a message
I love books too. When I was at school, I spent all my allowance on books. And when I ran of things to read, I started reading my mum's Mills and Boons - and imagine the shock that followed. :P
Muse: I honestly don't know where the secondhand book people stand on writing in them... I'm pretty sure I've had a couple of secondhand books that had birthday or Christmas messages in... and when I was young Ma used to write things in some of my books (on the ones from other people she wrote who gave it to me, for what celebration and in what year)... for dictionary that featured in my favourite things post has a message in it from her.
Honestly though, I've never been a big one for writing in books... possibly because I was always taught that they were precious and important and I shouldn't write in them.
And then you get those instances where you buy a book for a friend, write a beautiful message in the front of it, give it to them for Christmas, only to discover they already have it, and now you can't return it... :P
Sunshine: That's what libraries are for... I spent way too much of my childhood borrowing and reborrowing books from my local library.
I can happily spend hours and hours in bookshops. There's a second hand bookshop near where I used to live where the bloke always jumped up and wanted to know what you were looking for so he could help you find it - well meaning, but entirely missing the point for me of bookshops which is to find new stuff you'd never heard of before.
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