*Happy Almost Tax Day, y’all. I believe in paying my taxes, and do so joyfully – because I believe in supporting public good, public infrastructure, public education. When I have said this out loud in company, I am often met with a stunned expression – huh?! You what?! We have to change that narrative. among many others. Don’t pay more than your share, y’all – but pay – and hey, let’s get the billionaires to pay their fair share, too.
I also believe in used and second hand books. I love little free libraries, although bigger ones are good too (there is a large one in my local rural post office). My love for second hand books, second hand bookstores, and little free libraries combines several of my passions: reading, books, and cheapitude. Save money? I’m in – within reason, as I also adhere to the adage ‘penny-wise, pound foolish’. But! When it comes to second hand books, what is the foolish downside? Once in a blue moon you might get pages missing, or distracting underlining, notes, and highlighting (people who point out – often in PEN – gasp! – grammatical mistakes or presumed mistakes in texts annoy TF out of me, which is ridiculous, I know), but – but – but – all of that is easily handled, and pretty rare, really. I do recall one horrible night discovering pages missing in a book I was dying to finish, a long time ago. Quelle horreur – but I recovered, finding another copy in another used book store, probably the next day!
Whatever the very occasional challenges might be, there are the fun discoveries: postcards, photos, receipts from years ago or last week, a random quote inside the cover, someone unknown’s signature, a love poem on an old greeting card, and endless charming bookmarks from other wonderful second or first hand book stores. #SecondHandBookLove
“Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.”~Virginia Woolf
“I’ve always loved the language of flowers. I discovered Kate Greenaway’s ‘Language of Flowers’ in a used bookstore when I was 16 and couldn’t believe it was such a well-kept secret. How could something so beautiful and romantic be virtually unknown?” ~ Vanessa Diffenbaugh
“Used books,” as if someone else has had the best of them and you get the sere husk, or the lees, as if a book isn’t the one thing, the one product, that is forever new. There’s no such thing as a used book. Or there’s no such thing as a book if it’s not being used.” ~ Deborah Meyler
“I came across ‘The Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller in one of the most romantic ways one can find a story. I was digging through a pile of used books at my local library when my hand gravitated toward its brilliant teal and glistening gold cover.” ~Taylor Jenkins Reid
“Secondhand books had so much life in them. They’d lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. Theyd been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up on a mountain where the air thinned.” ~ Rebecca Raisin
“…when you held one of those volumes in your hands you were leafing through another person’s life. Someone else had once loved that story, too. Someone else had carried that book in a backpack, devoured it over breakfast, mopped up that coffee stain at a Paris café, cried herself to sleep after the last chapter. The scent of their store was distinctive: a slight damp mildew, a pinch of dust. To me, it was the smell of history.” ~ Jodi Picoult
“You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save money, but to make a point which is that a used book, unlike a used car, hasn’t lost any of its initial value. A good story rolls off the lot into the hands of its new reader as smoothly as the day it was written. And there’s another reason for these used paperbacks that never cost much even when new; I like the idea of holding a book that someone else has held, of eyes running over lines that have already seen the light of other eyes. That, in one image, is the community of readers, is the communion of literature.” ~ Yann Martel
“With any luck, Heaven itself will resemble a vast used bookstore, with a really good cafe in one corner, serving dark beer and kielbasa to keep up one’s strength while browsing.” ~ Michael Dirda
