I walked through the rain to Goodwill today to buy a birthday present and when I got there I did what I always do first: head right for the fiction paperback section. You can always tell someone who’s been haunting aisles of bookshelves because they kind of walk around with their ear near their shoulder for awhile until they straighten up again and face the hard edges of the world beyond the bookshelves.
I only had so much money, and some of it had to be put aside for the gift. But I had the 
luxury of the end of an afternoon and I was going to bask in books for awhile, I made up my mind. I have begun to notice how much I’d love to find copies of old Penguins or Puffins with their plain covers in orange and white or blue and white. I don’t know where to begin because I’m kind of naive that way. But I’m always on the look-out, but none there today, and probably never will be, since I guess most of them are pricey nowadays.
But I began to pile my arm with real finds. You know those days you go to, say, a thrift store and find nothing, and then other days you score big? This was one of those days. Big score (for me, anyway). I wound up with six paperbacks I’ve been wanting for some time, all priced 99-cents to $3.99 each. Here they are:
- Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
- A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
- In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth
None of this would be exciting to anyone who finds literature in Goodwill stores as a matter of course. It’s just that the one I can walk to has had a dearth of it since it opened, but now it’s begun to stock some fine reads. Oh, yes, and I also bought two nice necklaces for the birthday gift and walked home with a big smile on my face.
Thanks for stopping by Anneepple. Most of what I own is thrift too. Why buy new and line the pockets of those who charge a fortune for things that end up in landfills? I love the treasures you can find in thrifts, things that retail stores no longer carry, things that were part of other lives and have their own stories, things that last longer because they were made years, decades ago. I’m hooked on thrifts!
Thrifting is amazing. I think most of my house furniture is thrift as are many of my clothes. I often think how many places are there that you can try on so many different brands all in your size? I’d have to go in every store in a mall. And, of course, recycling is the best part!
Salvation Army is one of the places I go. I had a real workout from the massage lady at my chiropractor’s office as she fixed the cramps I get from that ear to shoulder syndrome. Once in a long while, I stop at the Goodwill. Their selection is meager to say the least, and high priced for used books. I paid $3 for a really worn out copy of the Lightning Thief when the movie came out. I was surprised to find it, so I snagged it even at that high price.
I’m just super-lucky to be in an area with a rich choice of libraries, each with a fair to goodly sized used book sale shelf. The highest I pay for a hardback is $1.50, and sometimes as low as $0.10. My problem is the eyes-are-bigger-than-mind syndrome. I pick up far more books than I could ever read. At my current rate of a book a week, I have enough books piled up to last me into the next century.
A book a week??? I’m lucky if I read a book every six months! I’m a book hoarder, I admit it. If I lived alone and died, my body would be buried in the best place it could be: under an avalanche of books
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“You can always tell someone who’s been haunting aisles of bookshelves because they kind of walk around with their ear near their shoulder for awhile until they straighten up again and face the hard edges of the world beyond the bookshelves.” YES! How brilliantly phrased!
My neck is still a little sore from yesterday
Exactly! “Like a good used bookstore — only with rock bottom prices!” My only problem with living so close to a Goodwill that’s begun to shelve good literature is that I’ve run out of bookshelf space and will have to begin stacking my finds along the walls of my room.
I love scoring cheap, good reads at Goodwill. I’m lucky that the one close to my house has a large book section and a team of volunteers that very nicely categorize the books into classics, literature, mystery, hardcover, etc. It makes the experience a bit like a good used bookstore – only with rock bottom prices!