Living In A Used Bookstore

by

Mackenzie Patel

Hello all! After haunting the dusty, slightly musty, and altogether enchanting shelves of a tiny used bookstore, I realized how deeply I appreciate books that are a little ripped up, have covers that dangle off the stained pages like hang nails, and smell like stale cologne. The giant, sterile chains of Barnes&Noble and Books A Million? Those hotspots of overpriced, unbent, and unloved literature don’t satisfy me anymore, especially their feeling of newness and lack of authentic grit. Also, I’m still nursing the gaping wound against Barnes&Noble for effectively shutting down Borders bookstores (my favorite store of many years).

After the meager sale section of Barnes & Noble started getting stingier, my disenchantment with traditional bookstores grew exponentially. Stacks upon crispy new stacks of trashy romance novels, biographies of YouTube stars who think they’re famous, and unrealistic young adult novels inevitably by John Green neatly crowded the industrial green carpets with disgusting monotony. Every book was stamped carelessly onto freshly cut paper, the glossy images unmarred by human touch and perfectly devoid of interesting stories and interactions. True, I will forever be ignorant as to who (or what) has caressed the pages of my used novel, but I can guarantee all the germs and unseen fingerprints are bursting with individualism and eccentric narratives. I also find the price of novels in impersonal conglomerates incredibly steep—I once paid a ghastly $12 for The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway! The allegorical short story barely flirts with the 120 page mark, and yet I still had to assault my wallet with more dollars than I was comfortable with. I didn’t particularly like The Old Man and the Sea anyway, and the entirely normal, grainy, and starchy scent of the pages was disappointing. There was no pure thrill of who could have touched those pages or whimsical back-story, only blind consumerism desperate to make a profit on priceless literature. However, I can’t relish too much in feeding Barnes& Noble to the wolves–used bookstores generally stock only the classics and more famous novels, leaving newly released books to fend for themselves in the traditional bookstore wilderness. With B&N, the captivating pages of The Red Notebook (Antoine Laurain) would never have imprinted themselves into my thoughts, the sexy Parisian story bypassing me completely. Nevertheless, B&N has an uncomfortable monopoly on the retail bookselling scene in the United States—the Green and White dominates over all others, with their net worth estimated at a jaw-dropping $1.02 billion.

Pulling the ultimate hipster move and vowing not to frequent B&N often, the used bookstore serving as the fire to my bookish addiction turned out to be Holy Grail I was seeking. I must admit, the first time I drove to this off-the-beaten path location, I was concerned about sketchy characters, drive-by muggings, and studded nails sinking into my Nissan tires. Driving off the main (and safe) road of Park Street, my little Rogue barreled down a skinny side street, the houses becoming more abject and the paltry vegetation more straggly than chin hairs on a blond man’s face. The oval blip on my Google Map turned out to be a building the size of a double wide, the twinkle lights on the exterior faintly blinking and the white gravel parking lot spotted with weeds and peeled paint. Distinctly rough and shocking for a sheltered girl with a proclivity for classical music, the dive inside the peeling walls was a discovery too brilliant for words. Unkempt and messy stacks of novels, real novels with suspicious spots of brown, moth-eaten covers, and the deliciously musty smell of life hidden between the wholesome pages surrounded me. Millions of words were tucked away all around me, spilling onto the 1970s-era carpet, hugging the wooden ceiling, and tickling my nose with rust and stardust. I don’t over exaggerate or spin needless fantasies out of dull reality, but this wonderfully cramped space was bursting with stories, characters, and dramatic lives that I could live a thousand years vicariously through.

The man who runs ZbookZ, a book hoarder turned into my personal hero, is too badass to accurately portray with mere adjectives. His silver hairdo drips with knowledge about his collection, and he will strike up a conversation with any customer as long as you simply open your mouth. He doesn’t just collect classic books (of which that golden collection is my favorite), but also art history books, “medical thrillers,” current fiction, self help books (i.e. A Dummie’s Guide to Raising Children), and musical biographies. I still rip myself to shreds because I did not buy the enticing biography of Tchaikovsky that I happened to see hidden among the books near the dusty ceiling—the next time I returned, it was gone! There is something so unique and different about this used palace of words—I’ve visited others like it before, but its diverse collection, interesting owner, and slightly unbreathable air enshrine it in perfection for me. Books I have purchased from it include The Bell Jar, Lives of the Artists, Anna Karenina, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ethan Frome, and The Red Badge of Courage. My goal is to utterly decimate the classics section and only spend $50 on the entire collection of hundreds. Prices are extremely affordable; I become irrationally happy when I find an ugly beauty for $1.25, which is probably the reason I’m so in love with the bookish trap.

In mathematical terms, used bookstores will forever be › lackluster book retailers with dollar signs for eyes. The copy of Anna Karenina that I snagged from ZBookZ only last week illustrates this simple inequality. With the velvet red cover dangling off the spine, random pages splotched with gray and brown, and the stamp of a Colorado Library crookedly lounging on the front page, it’s delightfully unsightly. However, hidden among the back pages, a blue sticky note covered with loopy cursive was stuck carelessly on it. Among other things, it said:

“I think I’m doing the right thing by not going to college right now, maybe never….I thought I would go crazy having all those people around all the time, but I really grew to love many of them and now I think I might go crazy without people around all the time…”

When libraries cease to satiate your literary thirst, and you wish to personally steal those timeless classics for yourself, musty shelves and blemished covers will be your oasis. Visit the ZBookZ website here.