One of the nice features of my town is the Cranky Old Man Used Bookstore–your classic dust-covered piles of books joint, shelves about to tumble onto you. My friend Michael came in from Bensonhoist and we made a trip to see C.O.M., our pockets filled with dollars. We were both amazed to meet Cranky Young Man, Cranky Old Man’s stunningly good-looking son (good-looking in a New Jersey Guido way, complete with tank top and tattoos). Michael and I both flirted till we sprained ourselves, to no avail. I did not come home with a cute Guido, but I did come home with (for a total of under $30!):
The March 1988 Life magazine, with a cover story on how Gilda Radner is Beating Cancer, and stories on Roy Cohn and Katharine Hepburn;
A cheesy 1950 paperback called Life and Death in Hollywood, with chapters on Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth, among others;
A (1986 reissued) copy of Margarete von Falkensee’s feelthy 1931 novel The Pleasure Garden, about low-life in Weimar Berlin;
Where the Blue Begins, a 1922 novel by Christopher Morley, who has never let me down;
Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend–now I find out if the Ray Milland character was gay in the book, like I’ve heard;
Making the Most of Your Looks, a fabulous, illustration-packed 1926 advice book on hair, makeup and clothes.
I could have spent all day in there, even without the cute Guido. Do you have any treasure-trove used bookstores in your neighborhoods? What have your most wonderful and oddest finds been?
In a smallish town just north of Minneapolis is a bookstore that I adore. I may have waxed about it before (in fact I am pretty sure I have), but it is heaven.
Creaking, uneven wooden floors so trod upon that any semblance of varnish has been worn off. Shelves crammed with books so tightly that you run the chance of pulling down every title in a 4’ span trying to peek at a blurb. That dusty, musty booky smell permeates everything. What light that can be had back in the stacks provided by bare bulbs with kite string pulls. In high school and college not a week would go by when I would escape there for a few hours just to poke around.
Best finds?
Almost every college book needed
A few first edition Zane Grey hardcovers
Pulp fiction (horror and sci fi) from the 50’s
A hardcover set of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, published in 1892. Bound in leather with well preserved tissue fine pages, I paid (IIRC) $50 15 years ago.
Madison has scads of used bookstores. More of my books have come from them than I’ve bought new, I think. Some favorites include:
First editions of all of Jackie Susann’s novels except Once Is Not Enough for $1 each; The History of Torture;
An entire set of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels; Hollywood Babylon and Hollywood Babylon II (sorry Eve);
Loads of movie star biographies
There used to be a great old used bookstore in Chicago, on Clark Street, called Aspidistra. I have no idea if it’s still there - last time I was in the area during daylight hours was in the early 1990s. Same kind of place you describe, Eve - dark, dusty, unorganized, rickety looking shelves and tables placed seemingly at random, with books just everywhere. The cranky old man that ran the place could put his hands on any book at any time, and he was an utter genius for looking at what you were buying and telling you what else you would like. Then, when you’d check out, he’d eyeball the pile of books in your arms and say, “ehhh…eight bucks sound good to you?”
Aspidistra, alas, is no more. I used to go there occasionally in less affluent times, and wish I could go there again now that I have more money to spend on books. I haven’t found another place like it.
My daughter works in a used book store. It’s actually pretty clean and well-organized, but it has the requisite Bookshop Cats in residence, and an absolutely astonishing selection of books, used and overstocks.
My favorite part is the fact that the owner allows his trusted employees to “borrow” books from the shop, as long as the books aren’t in huge demand or very valuable. Right now I’m working my way through half a dozen Rex Stout novels (and one is NOT a Nero Wolfe, but a Cramer). I’ll probably end up buying the books anyway. It’s nice to have as many books as I care to read available to me, though. The owner does this partly out of sheer niceness, but also because he can’t really offer economic benefits like health insurance or anything like that.
Yeah, there was one down in Belfast city centre that seemed quite good. Old guy (wasn’t cranky though) and all sorts of shelves and cabinets propping up mountains of old paperbacks.
I bought a Heinlein novel for about 50p which seems reasonable enough compared to prices on EBay and general availabiltiy in Belfast.
It didn’t seem as homely as other used book shops but was cheap. After a splurge on EBay I was going to head back to save money but it burnt down the other week unfortunatley
Not a bookstore, but the Salvation Army thrift store in my town has a basement wall filled with books. Sometimes I get real gems there for a dollar or less. I found Wilke Collins’s “Woman in White” a week after it was announced that ALW was turning it into a musical. And a book on London threatres that actually covers the show “Hulla Baloo.” As they put it: A show actually set in a loo, with contributions by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, both of whom would like to forget it.
When I’m bored and have nothing to do and little money to do it with, I can almost always find something to read in there.
The local libraries also have book sales every six months. I go there and come home with bags filled.
Slightly off-topic, but (as I’ve mentioned in a couple of threads) I just got a job in a small bookstore. It’s new books, and it’s a small chain, but I just need to announce my jubilation. Especially about the 40% discount.
Even though it doesn’t have a cat.
And last night while re-shelving I found approximately 1000 books I want immediately. And I’m going to be allowed to recommend sf and fantasy authors to order, which means I can get all my favourite authors in the store soon. w00t!
Thank you for listening. Now to return to our regularly scheduled thread.
There’s a used bookstore in Montgomery, AL that is a falling down dark dank dusty and spooky little former house whose floors and board/block shelves literally sag under the weight of the floor to ceiling books. It’s the sole survivor of when the area used to be residential- now it’s a dilapidated old house with handpainted bookstore signs in the middle of strip malls in a not-good area of town. The books are mostly organized but in several places particular genres ran out of shelfspace long ago so they just started over wherever shelves could be found, so science fiction authors A-V 1/2 cover one complete wall of the what was once the living room then run out of space, so for no particular reason they resume halfway through a wall of Harlequin romance novels two rooms down.
What’s incredible is that the 135 year old chain smoking lady who owns it (she’s just over 5’0 tall and weighs less than most of her cats who are running around) has no computer and no inventory system but can tell you instantly anything that she has without looking up from whatever she’s reading. “Gore Vidal’s Kalki… there’s a copy of it in the damaged hardback pile in the second room on the left third shelf to the right top row… it’s missing part of page 152 so I’ll sell it to you half-price…” Fantastic selection of non-fiction (the weak area of Montgomery’s other used bookstores which are all 99% used Grisham & King novels) and everything is priced to move (some of it has been waiting there for 30 years), so it’s one of my favorite places to shop for books anywhere. Unfortunately the old lady is selling it (the building is easily worth $800) and the new owners intend to put most of the books online, so its days are numbered.
My major pet peeves are the pretentious used bookstores with names like OTHELLO & CLEMENS where they have doilies on a sofa nobody sits on and the same books that sell for $3 at the store above are priced at $23 because they’re “out of print” (which anybody can tell you doesn’t mean that a book is collectibible- it just means that it’s not popular enough to be reprinted). If you ask will they take less you get some pretentious Goth kid who has no authority and you never hear from the management and consequently a book that you’d gladly give $10 for remains unsold and dust covered on a shelf for more than twice that for two years and the management seems to think it’s good business.
My bookstore is run by an old man, but he’s introverted not cranky. He never speaks above a librarian’s hush, and for some reason I find myself wanting to impress him with my selection of books. I don’t really try to engage him in conversation about my purchase, rather, I find myself somehow feeling pleased if he comments positively on it.
The store looks very presentable in the front, but becomes a warren of bookstacks as one walks further in. There’s the requisite cats in residence, huge American Shorthairs. My favorite section is a little nook filled with hardcover classics and poetry. There’s also a great mystery/detective section, more stack than shelf with tons of Ellery Queen books.
Some of my best finds (and also received murmurs of approval):
An uncopyrighted edition of the Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam with woodcuts on every other page.
A 6 volume set of The Nature Library 1926, mint.
A really pretty slip-cased edition of The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, 1941.
Casting The Horoscope with Ephemeris, published at - “Modern Astrology” Office, Imperial Buildings, Ludgate Circus, E.C. 1912. [sub]disclaimer - It has the coolest charts and diagrams, though I believe astrology is bunkum.[/sub]
I wish my Cranky Old Man were like that–he really is cranky. “Elinor Glyn? How the hell should I know if I have any Elinor Glyn? Go look for yerself.” And most of the lower shelves are obscured by cartons of books he never unpacked.
But it’s a treasure trove: he has fiction and nonfiction going back to the mid-1800s, as well as newer stuff (I have a weakness for trashy novels, late 19th- and early 20th-century vintage).
We have a used bookstore here that has a great location (in a little shopping district), but they never have any new stock. We went once and then a year later we went back and it was the same books in the same place with nothing new. I actually couldn’t find any book I wanted!
Funny you should suggest that, detop, because about 80% of the roughly 3,900 films released 1891-1900 in the Internet Movie Database are there because I put them there.
If life were like a 19th century movie, we’d be pulling pranks on grandpa, swimming at Atlantic City, working up the ire of the Irish cook, receiving midnight visits from Satan and beautiful fairies in our dreams, strolling around World Fairs a lot, riding trains through the Rockies, marching through veterans’ parades, getting caught every time we try to sneak a kiss from our sweetie, launching a fleet of ships, and dancing the couchee-couchee, the cakewalk, or the butterfly dance.
In other words, very limited (and sometime unrealistic) knowledge of human behaviour (I’m not dissing you Walloon, it’s just that these movies showed very little of true human behaviour, and BTW, 80 %, wow, I’m very impressed, keep up the good work ).
I have some really nice used bookshops here. They all tend to have tonnes of LDS literature if you are into it (since I am not a Mormon, I don’t have any interest), but I can spend hours and hours tucked away in the dim dark corners of it.
I have found some real finds as well. I have two illistrated children’s bibles from the 1890s, many old books that I just love because of the smell and many things that I have a interest in.
They have been the only place I have managed to find any Ursula Le Guin books (I have almost a complete collection of her books now due to these used bookshops).
).