“Buying a book means making an investment in your own future, a kind of bet.”
The first thing I did after I put on the gloves was I closed my eyes and breathed in. A smell so familiar it might as well be my own body: the brittle must of books, the dust and ink and decades-old fingerprints on a hundred thousand volumes. You might know that smell too, might be able to call it to mind right now. The smell of your university library, of the shelves at your grandparents’ house, of every used bookshop you’ve ever browsed.
The drive was ghostly, my familiar route governed by the old rush-hour tolls and rules but as empty of cars as if I was driving at midnight. I parked about 15 minutes early and walked around the block, bending big 6-foot arcs around the dog walkers, letting the joggers bend big 6-foot arcs around me. The moment my phone read “10:00,” I knocked on the door of the shop, with its now-moot hours of operation and its “CLOSED” sign.
For every person who loves shopping in used bookstores, the moment your finger stops is the moment a decision tree flowers before you. Do you pull the book out a little, to see its cover? Do you pull the book off the shelf, to read its jacket copy?read it? If the answer is yes, as it is perhaps a quarter of the time, you add the book to your pile.
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