Book donations have slowed at the store (cooler weather?), and yesterday I had time to straighten the shelves and re-alphabetize the Fiction section. A couple Penguin Classics came in this week, and as I went through the shelves I noticed a few more, then a few more, and...
Yay! Fourteen Penguins: enough for a display.
I wonder what it's like to be a reader and to go into a thrift store and see a display of Penguin Classics.
Hell's bells, I'd think. This is fantastic. I might buy every one, and be set back all of fourteen dollars.
When I started being custodian of books at the store, I might have been a little diffident about my belief in the Goodness of books. Not sure of being culturally biased, and all that.
Now, having seen lives deprived of reading,
I trumpet how good books are.
There are other good-to-great ways of being educated, entertained, and enlarged, (or, possibly, etiolated), and of wasting time. Of course there are.
But... there's nothing that has the REACH of books.
They're not dependent on their creators being nearby, or even alive.
You don't need a machine to access them.
Also, you can write one yourself.
We can have a good, full life without books. But without them, our scope is narrower.
Reading gives our neurons extensions, like penguins that can fly.
This is magic.
Magic is good.
love the penguins display! always on the lookout for them especially the old covers.
ReplyDeletehas the 20th century russian reader sold? i'd love that one.
flaubert is fun to read if you haven't.
i think more of the books are selling because of the wonderful displays and to see how they are arranged is a feast for the eyes.
kirsten
KIRSTEN: I didn't work today, so I don't konw if the Russian vol has sold--I'll grab it for you if it hasn't. I have a bunch of old (1950s-70s) pamphlets and books to mail to you too.
ReplyDeleteI have read Flaubert, but not for a long time.
Thanks for the compliment. Book sales are up, and I think you're right--displays help a lot.
I used to count Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot among my favorite books---haven't read that in a long time either, and would like to. Have you read it?
Oh! I just remembered--I started Madame Bovary not long ago and just couldn't stand to keep reading, the writing was so good, but I knew how badly the story was going to go.
I remember selling Penguin classics in the 80s and 90s when I worked in bookshops...a display was a joy to make!!
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