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Saturday, April 18, 2015

Used books

Can money be made selling used books?  You bet.

And who buys them?  I do.  I usually find something to read at the Good Will.  Among my recent finds: "The Piano Shop on the Left Bank," by Thad Carhart, full of interesting music about pianos, pianists, piano tuners, and music generally;  "The Devil to Play,"  by Jasper Rees, about playing the horn, with lots of gossip about music, musicians--Mozart in particularly--and everything else you might want to know about the horn.  I never would have looked for these books anywhere else because I didn't know they existed.

I bought a paperback copy of "An Officer and a Spy" by Robert Harris, which  only came out in January of this year, but found its way to the Good Will.  It's a well-researched re-creation of the Dreyfus Affair.   Harris, author of "Imperium" and "Conspirata," never disappoints.

Also "Dear Family," by Camilla Bittle-- an unpretentious, sympathetic portrait of the ordeals lived through by members of an ordinary family.---not a masterpiece for the ages, but if you want to know what families endured  in the Depression,you will find out here.  It's a nice change from the razzle dazzle pretentious fiction turned out nowadays.  Magical realism and all that rot.

Also, deTocqueville, "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, a collection of maps of ancient history, and more.

If I am in search of something published and forgotten long ago, I go to abebooks.com.  Amazon also has many forgotten but readable books, many in Kindle form. 

Many of the books I buy are not very good, and I read a little of them and then cast them aside.  They go back to the Good Will, or to the AAUW book sale, or to my daughter's college book sale.


1 comment:

Dick Stanley said...

Goodwill seems like a charity but it's one of the richest companies in the country. Simply because they pay nothing for the merchandise they sell. Most of that money goes to their execs, the "workers" see little of it. Nevertheless I also buy books from them now and then, though increasingly I use Amazon. One of the consequences of using an ereader instead of paper.