Hurrah!
I took three days off this week with the vague intention of maybe possibly going somewhere, but no such plans materialized. I also had two days off for my cousin's wedding shower (and another two at the end of this month for her wedding) which meant I really didn't NEED another spate of days off work. But giving vacation days back is unamerican, god dammit! So I plan to spend the next couple days simply enjoying the company of my cats. Perhaps I will even get some cleaning and straightening done! God knows the place badly needs it. Logically I know things would not pile up so much if I simply made a habit of nibbling at the edges every day, but I end up letting my laziness take control. It's easy to ignore these things when my after-work routine pretty much involves me going straight to the computer chair and staying there till I retreat to bed with my DS.
I've been hankering for used books ever since I visited this splendid store near Raleigh. Their scifi collection was excellent, which seems to be a rarity in used bookstores; I suspect that that often the book-buyers don't know much about the genre, and end up filling the section with crap. There's also the fact that there simply aren't as many copies of Neal Stephenson floating around as there are of older books. I also have an (admittedly) untested hypothesis that scifi and fantasy fans tend to be more inclined to horde than readers of mainstream fiction, which means that your William Gibson and your Terry Pratchett become beloved shelf-warmers where your John Grisham and your Amy Tan end up in used bookstores or given away.
At any rate, on Monday I hit a place called Book Rendezvous, which just moved into new digs a block away from work. I just did a brief walkthrough because I had to hit the pharmacy before closing, but I suspect I'll be back given the nearness to work. It has a little bit of everything, which makes each section pretty small, since it's a small store. The focus seems to be on more recent titles. The scifi section was okay, with again a focus on more recent titles, but I didn't find anything I especially wanted.
There are a couple of weird little clusters of bookstores in the city. One is up by 25th St. and consists of Kelmscott, Tiber, and Royal- examination of their web presence shows them to be fancy pants book shops who primarily deal in rare books, manuscripts and prints. I am sure that is dandy if you are looking for a 50-year-old first edition for your collection, or need something striking to hang in your mansion's drawing room, but I am not and do not. :P Also I don't have a drawing room.
I went instead to Allen's Bookshop and Normal's Used Books, which are located up by The Book Thing. Really it would have been smarter to wait till the weekend, when The Book Thing is open, but I didn't feel like it. Even though it was too god damned hot to be out, I wanted to earn my cold shower and relaxing evening.
Allen's Bookshop is a smallish place that comes across as a basement sort of affair, even though it's in the upper story of an old house. It's basically three rooms (the middle one mainly taken up with the sales counter) that have been turned into a warren of poorly-labeled shelves. It's fairly well divided into categories, although the labeling is hard to spot. The fiction selection was disappointingly small, and was mainly focused on classics and ponderous tomes. The selections for poetry and film seemed pretty good, and history seemed to be the largest category overall, with a particular focus on American history. I suspect the guy does most of his business online; a number of shelves were marked "mixed internet stock" and damned if I could tell you what organization scheme was going on there. My overall impression was formed by the cluttered nature of the place (lots of books on the floor too), as well as the fact that the owner made change for me out of his billfold. ;) Also, I noticed that the children's books were shelved directly next to the erotica section, which was hilarious.
Perhaps my relative disappointment with Allen's (although I did buy several books there, I must note!) was due to having just come from Normals. They were fucking awesome. The store consists of three rooms: two normal-sized and a third which is more like a corridor that goes around two sides of the place. All are packed by floor-to-ceiling shelves, but the good lighting and the clear labeling of the shelves made it seem neat; I suspect it might have been cramped if there were a lot of patrons, but it was basically just me in there. The place was large and the selection was pretty vast (by used bookstore standards- obviously no mere bookshop is going to match your two-story Barnes and Noble warehouse level of stock). History alone took up most of the corridor-room and was broken down into regions and countries with several shelves each (at least) plus a large American history collection broken down into subjects/time periods. A great deal of space was devoted to music, film, art, and theater. General fiction seemed evenly split between classic literature and modern fiction, and there were sections staked out for mystery, horror, and sci fi. The scifi section was a tad disappointing to me, but I can't accuse the buyers of incompetence; they may be focused primarily on decades old material, but it's not dross, it's solid classical stuff with a heavy representation by Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, and the like. Also worth noting (although I didn't really go through it) is Normals' focus on music. They have a lot of space devoted to cds, tapes, and LPs- particularly the latter! Prices on the books are reasonable- mostly in the $2.50-$5 range, more for first editions or signed copies. (Most of these are segregated in their own sections.) Highly, highly recommend.
There are two more places I want to hit in the central Baltimore area- The Book Escape and Salamander. Given that I dropped $50 on books today, I think I might wait a bit. Or maybe I'll go this weekend! It depends how bored I get.
Top it all off with lemonade, a delicious sammich, and the best fucking cookies in the world, and I think that's a pretty good day. :D
I've been hankering for used books ever since I visited this splendid store near Raleigh. Their scifi collection was excellent, which seems to be a rarity in used bookstores; I suspect that that often the book-buyers don't know much about the genre, and end up filling the section with crap. There's also the fact that there simply aren't as many copies of Neal Stephenson floating around as there are of older books. I also have an (admittedly) untested hypothesis that scifi and fantasy fans tend to be more inclined to horde than readers of mainstream fiction, which means that your William Gibson and your Terry Pratchett become beloved shelf-warmers where your John Grisham and your Amy Tan end up in used bookstores or given away.
At any rate, on Monday I hit a place called Book Rendezvous, which just moved into new digs a block away from work. I just did a brief walkthrough because I had to hit the pharmacy before closing, but I suspect I'll be back given the nearness to work. It has a little bit of everything, which makes each section pretty small, since it's a small store. The focus seems to be on more recent titles. The scifi section was okay, with again a focus on more recent titles, but I didn't find anything I especially wanted.
There are a couple of weird little clusters of bookstores in the city. One is up by 25th St. and consists of Kelmscott, Tiber, and Royal- examination of their web presence shows them to be fancy pants book shops who primarily deal in rare books, manuscripts and prints. I am sure that is dandy if you are looking for a 50-year-old first edition for your collection, or need something striking to hang in your mansion's drawing room, but I am not and do not. :P Also I don't have a drawing room.
I went instead to Allen's Bookshop and Normal's Used Books, which are located up by The Book Thing. Really it would have been smarter to wait till the weekend, when The Book Thing is open, but I didn't feel like it. Even though it was too god damned hot to be out, I wanted to earn my cold shower and relaxing evening.
Allen's Bookshop is a smallish place that comes across as a basement sort of affair, even though it's in the upper story of an old house. It's basically three rooms (the middle one mainly taken up with the sales counter) that have been turned into a warren of poorly-labeled shelves. It's fairly well divided into categories, although the labeling is hard to spot. The fiction selection was disappointingly small, and was mainly focused on classics and ponderous tomes. The selections for poetry and film seemed pretty good, and history seemed to be the largest category overall, with a particular focus on American history. I suspect the guy does most of his business online; a number of shelves were marked "mixed internet stock" and damned if I could tell you what organization scheme was going on there. My overall impression was formed by the cluttered nature of the place (lots of books on the floor too), as well as the fact that the owner made change for me out of his billfold. ;) Also, I noticed that the children's books were shelved directly next to the erotica section, which was hilarious.
Perhaps my relative disappointment with Allen's (although I did buy several books there, I must note!) was due to having just come from Normals. They were fucking awesome. The store consists of three rooms: two normal-sized and a third which is more like a corridor that goes around two sides of the place. All are packed by floor-to-ceiling shelves, but the good lighting and the clear labeling of the shelves made it seem neat; I suspect it might have been cramped if there were a lot of patrons, but it was basically just me in there. The place was large and the selection was pretty vast (by used bookstore standards- obviously no mere bookshop is going to match your two-story Barnes and Noble warehouse level of stock). History alone took up most of the corridor-room and was broken down into regions and countries with several shelves each (at least) plus a large American history collection broken down into subjects/time periods. A great deal of space was devoted to music, film, art, and theater. General fiction seemed evenly split between classic literature and modern fiction, and there were sections staked out for mystery, horror, and sci fi. The scifi section was a tad disappointing to me, but I can't accuse the buyers of incompetence; they may be focused primarily on decades old material, but it's not dross, it's solid classical stuff with a heavy representation by Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, and the like. Also worth noting (although I didn't really go through it) is Normals' focus on music. They have a lot of space devoted to cds, tapes, and LPs- particularly the latter! Prices on the books are reasonable- mostly in the $2.50-$5 range, more for first editions or signed copies. (Most of these are segregated in their own sections.) Highly, highly recommend.
There are two more places I want to hit in the central Baltimore area- The Book Escape and Salamander. Given that I dropped $50 on books today, I think I might wait a bit. Or maybe I'll go this weekend! It depends how bored I get.
Top it all off with lemonade, a delicious sammich, and the best fucking cookies in the world, and I think that's a pretty good day. :D