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Oliver Goldsmith once famously said that he loved “everything that is old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books and old wines.” To this estimable list I would add old bookstores.
Every time I go to a new city or town, I seek out old, even run-down bookstores, from storefront charity shops all the way up to wood-paneled antiquarian booksellers. To be clear, I generally don’t look for new bookstores, especially the local independents that seem to be thriving in many well-heeled areas. That’s because most new bookstores have become deeply politicized (OK, let me just say it: woke) and more focused on selling me a Black Lives Matter mug or Ruth Bader Ginsberg bobblehead doll than putting a good book into my hands. Call me a globalist or a corporatist jerk, but these days, if I need a new book, I usually just order it on Amazon or buy it at Barnes & Noble.
By contrast, most used bookstores aren’t interested in raising my consciousness. What’s more, each shop has its own feel and its own eclectic stock of books. When I walk into one of these places, I get a touch of the frisson that explorers and archeologists must feel: I never know what I’m going to find.
This is true even of the charity shops that are often found in dingy strip malls. These places tend to be utilitarian-looking and, because they depend on donations, stock mostly trade paperbacks and recent bestsellers. But what they lack in charm they occasionally make up for in wonderful, affordable discoveries. I’ve found rare science fiction novels (including a few early Robert Heinlein hardbacks) as well as first editions of some of my favorite 20th-century poets and novelists in these stores—all at laughably low prices.
More traditional used bookshops, those in the middle price range, charge much more but also have a much better selection of books, and on a wider range of topics. That’s because mid-range shops usually buy books from many sources, from estate sales to church flea markets. In my experience, these places also are often staffed by (mostly) friendly eccentrics. From people behind the registers at used bookstores, I’ve heard everything from wonderful book and film recommendations to the “truth” about who actually wrote Beethoven’s symphonies. (Hint: not Beethoven.)
But while I’m always happy to visit regular used bookstores and even charity shops, I get truly excited when I find an antiquarian bookseller. Not to exaggerate too breathlessly, but to go into a good antiquarian shop, especially for the first time, is to enter a different world. The wooden shelves that often rise two stories, the row upon row of leatherbound and gold-embossed books (some of them centuries old) and the wonderfully musty perfume of yellowing paper make it seem like you’ve just walked into some eminent philosopher’s personal library—except that everything is for sale.
At many of these stores, I’ve had the pleasure of opening first editions of some of the greatest books ever written, from “The Great Gatsby” to “Great Expectations.” I’ve paged through early editions of Browning and Gibbon and even earlier translations of Cicero and Seneca. Antiquarian bookshops are also usually chockablock with what I’ll call book-adjacent artifacts—not political T-shirts or bobblehead dolls but antique bookends, small bronze busts and old prints and maps.
First and foremost, however, are the books, especially the ones you’re able to afford and then take home and treasure. Unlike so many of the look-alike books being published today, used books—especially those published before the 1970s—are often beautifully bound and illustrated. At one antiquarian seller in south Florida, for example, I recently found wonderful Folio Society [ [link removed] ] editions of Evelyn Waugh and George Eliot, as well as a set of 1950s Gnome Press [ [link removed] ] hardbacks of Robert Howard’s stories—books that, months later, I’m still pulling out and thumbing through at least once a week.
These nicer editions are not only works of art that can regularly be enjoyed for the rest of your life, but time capsules, and not just in the most obvious way. I’ve found everything from beautiful postcards and bookmarks to yellowed, clipped newspaper articles (often a review of the book) tucked into many of the used volumes I’ve purchased. Sometimes, these artifacts have been almost as interesting as the book itself. For instance, an edition of Kenneth Clark’s “Civilization” that I purchased many years ago in college had stuffed in it a clipping of a yellowed, multipage obituary of Clark from the Daily Telegraph, which not only educated me about why he was so important as an art curator and educator, but also described a large number of his other books, many of which I went on to read and enjoy.
Many older volumes also contain the name of the original owner, often as part of a lovely bookplate. I’ve sometimes looked up these names and discovered fascinating things about the people who used to own my books. For instance, one of my books used to be part of the library of a man named John R. Ramsey Jr., who happened to be the son of Alice Huyler Ramsey, the first woman to drive across the United States. Many front pages also contain personal inscriptions—some utterly prosaic, others deeply moving—that can give you a window not only into a book’s journey, but into the mores and attitudes of past generations as well.
Beyond the great pleasure offered to those of us who love to look for and buy used books, all these stores also have an important civilizational mission: They are preserving not only great books, but great books as books. A beautifully bound edition is itself a work of art that enhances and even transcends the words contained within it. In our increasingly disposable age, used bookstores are preserving this greatest of human inventions, the book, while offering those of us who suffer from book madness opportunities for wonderfully serendipitous relief from our condition.
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