"A room without books is like a body without a soul." ~Cicero
For the past ten years I've been adding to my book collection. I buy 99% of my books at secondhand shops and happen to live directly behind a Savers thrift store.
Most thrift stores don't categorize their books in any organized manner which makes perusing them a major pain in the ass if you don't have the patience... and patience is something I lack. Forgive me Axl Rose.
I strive to buy used books but prefer to buy old used books. There's something about old books that appeal to me. Perhaps it's the fabric-like cover of the hardbacks or the musty smell of the yellowed pages. Maybe it's because an old book actually does have a soul... like an old, beat-up guitar that still has a ghost of a song in it, waiting and wanting to come out. I happen to have my old beat-up guitar hanging on the wall and one of these days I'm going to find that song; maybe as soon as I learn how to play the damn thing.
I have a lot of the classics; Huck & Tom, Pygmalion, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a few by Hemingway, Wouk, Stevenson, Steinbeck... you know, all the ones I was suppose to read in school but didn't. I've also managed to upgrade most of my Kurt Vonnegut books to hardcovers. When I replace one of my badly worn Vonnegut paperbacks with a used hardcover, I donate the paperback to the thrift store, hoping it will fall into the hands of some teenager who's struggling with humanity... like I was when I first read Vonnegut 22 years ago.
Tonight I went to the Goodwill store on West Sahara. I was looking for a particularly odd-sized poster frame and Goodwill's prices and selection beat the heck out of Savers. For some reason Savers likes to think tacky 1980's art can justify an arrogant selling price. Please... I want the frame, not the work of a Georgia O'Keefe rip-off artist whose claim to fame is having prints in the rooms of Holiday Inn.
I walked over to the reading section and found an old book about the trial of Jack Ruby. I'm obsessed with the Kennedy assassination and have eleven books on the subject; make it twelve now. I also found an amusing book by P.J. O'Rourke... I always liked his stories in Rolling Stone. Then, as the kicker, I found a 1925 MacMillan Pocket Classic of Charles Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities. The book use to belong to a certain Frank Snyder who lived at 514 Hampton. I know this because he wrote his name and address with a pencil on the inside cover. I regard this latest found book to be right up there with my 1943 edition of Hitler's Mein Kampf (purchased for $1.00 at Savers and $1.85 less than it's original 1943 cover-price). It's eerie to read the preface of that book; the writer refers to The Fuhrer in the first person because Hitler was still alive at the time.
Get this: I got all three books for a mere 99 cents. I need to start frequenting Goodwill more often on Fridays.
Want to know where all the used copies of Angela's Ashes, The Bridges of Madison County and The Da Vinci Code are? In thrift stores. Yep, it's true. Just like all those Smokey and the Bandit era Chevy Camaros are rusting on cinder blocks in Tijuana right now. How I miss seeing those t-tops and huge eagle decals on the hoods!
The secret is this: You may have to look beyond the New York Time's best sellers to find something worth reading. Look past them but also look at the past. What you find may surprise you. Want to know another secret? I haven't really read one single word from any of the authors in my collection of classics. I tried reading Hemingway once but after the third page (and the same run-on sentence) I was out of breath. You see, my lips move ever so slightly when I read to myself. I've noticed over the years this annoys people even though I don't read aloud. I should stop smoking; it's pretty bad when a book can make you winded.
Yes, I'm saving the books for my golden years. Someday I'm going to be too old to get out of the house and crossword puzzles won't be a challenge anymore. Any future wife of mine will probably go to bed early and any children involved will be grown and gone. I'm saving my books for when all that's left is myself and my soul-filled rooms... along with that wooden rocking chair I'll someday find at a thrift store.
I think it was Emily Dickinson who said, "I have traveled to many distant lands, all in my mind, from reading a book."
And where will I go first?
The Snows of Kilimanjaro sound majestic.
I hope Hemingway grows on me.
FiN.
