I was catching up on the latest season when I heard something that really caught my attention.
"Bookstores are the hubs of true, complex critical thought."
Temperance Brennan has a point!
When I was younger, book stores were always a sort of magical place. You could learn things you didn't even know you were searching for. You could experience new things in rapid, rabid succession. There was a freedom in bookstores that didn't exist in the library.
Looking around today, there's only one bookstore and it's not really convenient to get to. Books are such an important part of life, it's almost impossible to imagine that some day we might not have access to these vital intersections of ideas.
I remember the first bookstore I ever shopped at was a small, second-hand affair in a strip-mall. It was dark and dusty and only had the one window at the front of the shop. You could buy books there, used of course, and then sell them back when you were finished for a ten percent return on the original cost of the book. It was the perfect revolving door of reading and I loved it. I would carry home brown paper grocery bags full of books, read each one, then take the majority back for someone else to enjoy. If I happened to fall in love with one, which occurred once out of every thirty books or so, I could simply keep that book.
The key really was the ten percent return. If I bought a used paperback for lets say ninety-nine cents, and it originally cost $4.99, I would get a forty-nine cent return on my original investment. Since the stock was always circulating, there was never a shortage of things to pick up and I really felt there was value in trading them back in for others to read. Of course, this trade in price only worked if you wanted store credit to buy more books. If you wanted to simply sell them for cash, you got ten percent of the actual price you paid for the book. It was a pretty great system.
I haven't seen a store like that in years. Where else could you find erotica stashed next to Shakespeare? What other place could you meet a wide range of people, even as a child? Where else could you have discussions, sometimes heated, over the change in authors behind some beloved franchise?
I really wish we could bring back the small trade-in friendly bookshop. Anyone still have one by them?
When I was younger, book stores were always a sort of magical place. You could learn things you didn't even know you were searching for. You could experience new things in rapid, rabid succession. There was a freedom in bookstores that didn't exist in the library.
Looking around today, there's only one bookstore and it's not really convenient to get to. Books are such an important part of life, it's almost impossible to imagine that some day we might not have access to these vital intersections of ideas.
I remember the first bookstore I ever shopped at was a small, second-hand affair in a strip-mall. It was dark and dusty and only had the one window at the front of the shop. You could buy books there, used of course, and then sell them back when you were finished for a ten percent return on the original cost of the book. It was the perfect revolving door of reading and I loved it. I would carry home brown paper grocery bags full of books, read each one, then take the majority back for someone else to enjoy. If I happened to fall in love with one, which occurred once out of every thirty books or so, I could simply keep that book.
The key really was the ten percent return. If I bought a used paperback for lets say ninety-nine cents, and it originally cost $4.99, I would get a forty-nine cent return on my original investment. Since the stock was always circulating, there was never a shortage of things to pick up and I really felt there was value in trading them back in for others to read. Of course, this trade in price only worked if you wanted store credit to buy more books. If you wanted to simply sell them for cash, you got ten percent of the actual price you paid for the book. It was a pretty great system.
I haven't seen a store like that in years. Where else could you find erotica stashed next to Shakespeare? What other place could you meet a wide range of people, even as a child? Where else could you have discussions, sometimes heated, over the change in authors behind some beloved franchise?
I really wish we could bring back the small trade-in friendly bookshop. Anyone still have one by them?
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