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May. 14th, 2005 10:20 pmI don't buy books anymore.
I used to spend a lot of time in bookstores. Vacations and day trips were opportunities to explore new booksellers, and if I liked the a place I'd always search until I found something I wanted, as a souvenir. For a few years around the turn of the century I bought books faster than I could read them. Instead of a list of books to read, I had a shelf of them, which expanded to a whole bookcase, which then grew around the corner to a second wall of my bedroom. Then I quit my job and started going to the library. Then I realized I still had all these books I'd bought, and I stopped going to the library. And lately I just don't read much.
But when I bought books, I bought a lot of them from Kepler's, so today I had to drop in on their fiftieth birthday party. The cake was delicious, I successfully didn't win anything I didn't want in the raffle, and in the end I had to buy some books, even though I have all these other ones waiting to be read. I left with Kate Walbert's Our Kind and Alex Garland's The Coma, which I'm now almost halfway through.
Across the street, Wessex Books is closing its doors. It's the only place I know where you could expect to find not just one used book by, say, Gilbert Adair or Georges Perec, but a wide selection. No longer--now there's one of each, and not their best. Wessex didn't fail; the owner just decided to "explore something new", and at the beginning of this year announced his search for a new owner. He never found one, and the remaining stock is going for 60% off. I bought Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.
Then Applewood Pizza (has it been years?), the Enron movie at the Guild (it's been almost that long), inescapably a frosted mocha from Cafe Borrone, and listening to Chelsey Fasano on a slow, half-seen drive home.
I used to spend a lot of time in bookstores. Vacations and day trips were opportunities to explore new booksellers, and if I liked the a place I'd always search until I found something I wanted, as a souvenir. For a few years around the turn of the century I bought books faster than I could read them. Instead of a list of books to read, I had a shelf of them, which expanded to a whole bookcase, which then grew around the corner to a second wall of my bedroom. Then I quit my job and started going to the library. Then I realized I still had all these books I'd bought, and I stopped going to the library. And lately I just don't read much.
But when I bought books, I bought a lot of them from Kepler's, so today I had to drop in on their fiftieth birthday party. The cake was delicious, I successfully didn't win anything I didn't want in the raffle, and in the end I had to buy some books, even though I have all these other ones waiting to be read. I left with Kate Walbert's Our Kind and Alex Garland's The Coma, which I'm now almost halfway through.
Across the street, Wessex Books is closing its doors. It's the only place I know where you could expect to find not just one used book by, say, Gilbert Adair or Georges Perec, but a wide selection. No longer--now there's one of each, and not their best. Wessex didn't fail; the owner just decided to "explore something new", and at the beginning of this year announced his search for a new owner. He never found one, and the remaining stock is going for 60% off. I bought Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.
Then Applewood Pizza (has it been years?), the Enron movie at the Guild (it's been almost that long), inescapably a frosted mocha from Cafe Borrone, and listening to Chelsey Fasano on a slow, half-seen drive home.
