The Watcher Cat

The Watcher Cat

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The Joy of the Used Bookstore

Across the gulf of ideological disagreement, let me salute and agree with Gracy Howard's paean of praise to Capitol Hill Books, one of my favorite away-game bookstores. I am also extremely fond of Second Story Books, that rarity of a used bookshop where I have never walked out empty handed. My last visit there, when I was down in DC for a work conference, I found a really lovely modern reprint of the Aubrey Beardsley edition of Le Morte D'Arthur, bound nicely, and at full size.

That's what I love about used bookstores that can't be replaced by online shopping: serendipity. The random finding of, in this case, something I've long desired, but stopped looking for. I'd given up.

And then fate dropped it into my happy, unresisting hands...

Now if fate would find me that complete set of Trollope...

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