[HN Gopher] The mild anarchy of piles of second-hand books
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The mild anarchy of piles of second-hand books
Author : apollinaire
Score : 87 points
Date : 2021-07-20 05:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| jll29 wrote:
| In addition to second-hand book shops I enjoy visiting book
| villages like Hay-on-Wye: http://www.hay-on-wye.co.uk
| murphyslab wrote:
| Are there many other "book villages" out there?
| teh_klev wrote:
| There's also Wigtown in Dumfriesshire:
|
| https://www.wigtownbookfestival.com/visit/bookshops
|
| https://www.wigtown-booktown.co.uk/bookshops/
|
| It's about the same size as Hay-on-Wye.
| petercooper wrote:
| The chap who runs the biggest bookshop in Wigtown is a
| funny character who's written a hugely enjoyable book
| called _" The Diary of a Bookseller"_ about the ins and
| outs of running such a book shop. A way to get rich it is
| not.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| :
|
| 2) Write book about losing money running a book shop.
|
| 3) Profit!
| petercooper wrote:
| I don't know about that, because if there's famously one
| profession that makes even less than running a book
| shop.. :-)
| teh_klev wrote:
| Cheers for the recommendation.
| stevekemp wrote:
| If you weren't aware there is a sequel too:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/series/303571-the-diary-of-a-
| books...
| leegraham wrote:
| I think Hay is the most famous in the UK, but there are
| others such as Sedbergh.
| cafard wrote:
| There's Archer City, Texas. The late Larry McMurtry moved his
| used book operation there from the Georgetown neighborhood of
| Washington, DC, ago. I don't know what its long-term future
| is, now that McMurtry's gone, but the website says that it's
| still operating: https://www.bookedupac.com/.
| mongol wrote:
| I once bought a used book, in as-new condition. When I came home
| I found an inscription in it. From the text I could tell it was a
| graduation gift. Through some clues in the well-wishing
| inscription, and some detective work on Google, I found that the
| gift-givers were Anni-Frid Lyngstad and her late husband, prince
| Heinrich Ruzzo Reuss. Anni-Frid was one of the singers in ABBA.
| That made the book more than worth it's price to me.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| _Is_ one of the singers in ABBA.
|
| I'm always torn on inscriptions. Interesting when quite old and
| both giver and recipient have long since departed, but a bit
| weird when a book was gifted only recently. As the proud owner
| of a two year old kid, thrift stores and second hand book
| stores are a great source for children's books, but reading a
| lovely written inscription from a loving aunt in a good
| children's book only a few years old feels awkward.
|
| Personally, I'm of the no-inscription school of gift-giving.
| Add a note or letter, sure, but leave the book clean. A book
| that gets re-gifted, loaned, inherited, sold, and endlessly re-
| read is doing its job well, so don't burden the recipient with
| an inscription that may form a barrier to doing so.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I find reading the inscriptions fascinating.
|
| I once found a children's book here, for 2-5 year olds, in
| Finland which was bought from a school library.
|
| The library? In New Zealand.
|
| How did it travel all that distance? No idea, but it's
| fascinating to think about.
| mongol wrote:
| True. Except ABBA is no more. I don't know whether that
| matters?
| iso1210 wrote:
| Abba never officially ended - and indeed they are actively
| working on a new tour at the moment
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Especially with the boost to their popularity that Dave
| Grohl just gave to them, it's a good time to strike.
| anthk wrote:
| On second hand books, the Fabled Land gamebooks are almost a solo
| RPG/analogic RPG video game which can be played with no power :).
|
| Also, a lot of the older books on technical terms are far better
| because the skills on similar education levels were far higher
| back in the day. For example, today's Electrical Engineering
| books from the first year in College were on par on senior HS
| years.
| murphyslab wrote:
| > But there are books you don't know you want and you won't know
| you want them until they're standing on a shelf in front of you.
|
| This is why I love the libraries and old book shops. There's a
| lot of value in the serendipity of browsing, since you can
| discover related monographs that one's search queries somehow
| missed. Also it's great for inspiration: you see unconnected
| things which might spark new ideas or interests.
|
| > It feels increasingly difficult to access forms of historical
| material which haven't been diligently curated for your good,
| filtered into bland homogeneity to suit some corporation's
| agenda.
|
| It's good to escape that algorithmic curation of one's interests.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'll go further, browsing draws you into the here and now.
|
| I think I'm beginning to see a change in the way I function now
| as compared with two decades ago.
|
| Before internet browsing allowed me to sit and decide "Where do
| I want to go today", I did physically have to _go_ somewhere.
|
| I have not studied it enough to figure out exactly _what_ I 've
| lost or the causes but I definitely feel that I have begun to
| live more in my head and less in the moment. Certain things
| though like browsing used book stores remind me of a positive
| thing that I used to do....
| dorchadas wrote:
| Absolutely. I love browsing university libraries specifically
| for this reason. Find where they shelve books on a topic I'm
| interested in and just browse what's around it. See the
| different types of books available, the different ways people
| have interpreted or written about a thing.
| Animats wrote:
| Are there any left? The last one I knew of on the SF peninsula
| was on Castro St. in Mountain View, and they moved to Gilroy or
| something. I still had about $70 of credit with them.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| The good ones in SF were gone by 2015.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I live in Gilroy. They're still here, thankfully. I feel pretty
| lucky to have them nearby.
|
| https://www.yelp.com/biz/bookbuyers-gilroy
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I passed an old UK telephone box (one with full transparant sides
| - not the red ones) full of (presumably) 2nd hand books.
|
| Someone had put shelves in the telephone box and it has a small
| plastic curtain to protect the books from the rain
|
| It's still there since I first saw it over 18months ago, so I'm
| assuming the kids have not found a creative way of using the
| books for other purposes or may be they use it
| rapnie wrote:
| We have this in The Netherlands in a lot of cities, where
| people have made wooden boxes, phone boots, and other places
| outside, filled with 2nd-hand books. You can freely take them,
| but the unwritten rule is you put another book back in return.
|
| There are sites where you can become member, and see locations
| on a map: https://minibieb.nl/minibieb/buiten-boekenkast/
| salamandersauce wrote:
| It's a little free library! They are pretty common around the
| world these days.
| anthk wrote:
| In Spain too, at least in Salamanca. But Salamanca has been a
| University city since the Middle Ages, so something like that
| has always been a logical thing (thousands of people do an
| Arts/Humanities Bachelor Degree in Salamanca). You know,
| historians and such.
| okprod wrote:
| I like all print books, but especially used ones for their
| texture, smell, and other intangible factors like holding a piece
| of history. Whenever I travel I make it a point to also stop by a
| used bookstore to pick something up. I try to avoid ebooks when
| possible, but sometimes things like technical manuals are easier
| to digest/search/etc electronically.
| sfRattan wrote:
| I've found that second-hand bookstores are good for figuring out
| which books people treasure the most. Pick an author, scan that
| author's bibliography, and visit second-hand bookstores.
|
| The works you can't find? Those are the ones people treasure.
|
| Or, at least, the ones people won't part with for some reason.
| cafard wrote:
| Well, or their heirs don't treasure. I've found some fairly
| remarkable stuff in used bookstores.
| wrp wrote:
| The best used book stores are the ones that build their stock
| by buying the libraries of retired/deceased scholars. The few
| that I used to know went out of business, so I don't know what
| happens to good collections now.
| murphyslab wrote:
| > The works you can't find? Those are the ones people treasure.
|
| I would say that you're mostly right, but it depends on the
| size and number of the print runs. If something's deemed a
| "classic" (frequently reprinted), or if it was a modern
| bestseller (mass printing), you'll find multiple copies and
| versions regardless of whether people treasure the book.
|
| Despite being treasured by many people, there are tons of
| copies of "The Hobbit" in second-hand bookshops. 100 million
| copies sold will do that! [0] Yet there aren't many copies of
| "Tree and Leaf", and as you suggest, it's usually treasured
| thus not easily found. It was a special delight when I found a
| copy while browsing, as I'd never seen it before and haven't
| since, and I'm certainly not giving up my copy.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books
| sfRattan wrote:
| Availability can absolutely be highly contextual.
|
| Frank Herbert's Dune, for example, has been difficult to find
| in second-hand bookshops (even the old mass market paperback)
| because there is (and has been for some time... thanks COVID)
| a film adaption by a prominent director (Denis Villeneuve) on
| the cusp of release.
| fumblebee wrote:
| I find browsing used-bookstores tranquil and comforting. I've
| spent far too long in my life craning my neck looking at books in
| the quiet maze of these stores.
|
| Incidentally, as someone who tends to move around a lot, this has
| also been a burden. Once I've bought a second-hand book and spent
| hours reading it, I find it very difficult to abandon it
| (especially if I enjoyed it). So whenever I move from a city, I
| inevitably spend a small fortune on funnelling them back to my
| Ma's house.
|
| When I finally buy a place I plan to gather them all and have my
| own little library of used books, from all round the world.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| For a digital equivalent, I quite like openlibrary.org It's got a
| similarly chaotic vibe (partly because they've not totally
| normalized their metadata yet) and lots of obscure stuff.
|
| One particularly weird benefit is searching for your fave author
| and finding some PhD or other obscure fan produced work about the
| author (and/or their works) that would never make it into an
| actual bookshop, even a digital one.
|
| They have some digital experiments to recreate the browsing a
| library feeling too (similar to the rash of Mac book cataloging
| apps that appeared on the Mac way back and may have kicked off
| the most recent revival of the skeumorphic design trend.)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I miss my old used bookstores. I had one I went to since I was
| twelve. The owner's husband was moving to the U.A.E. and she sold
| it, without telling anyone, apparently, but me. I bought the last
| book she sold.
|
| The new owners tried to make it into a Christian thing but didn't
| understand the nuances of the used book industry the way she did,
| and so it folded after some time.
|
| Meanwhile, I have thousands of used books and I have no idea what
| to do with them. Old programming books -- what to do with those?
| Are they worth anything to anyone now? Fiction I can understand,
| but these seemed to have aged out. I think I have books on Java
| old enough to drive.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Meanwhile, I have thousands of used books and I have no idea
| what to do with them. Old programming books -- what to do with
| those? Are they worth anything to anyone now?
|
| Mot really. Maybe some old programming, guide books, etc. are
| vaguely interesting for someone to flip through if they're old
| enough but, for the most part, no. And anyone you donate them
| to will just throw them out. No one wants my 1970s Encyclopedia
| Brittanica out in the garage either.
|
| As an individual who doesn't want to maybe earn minimum wage or
| less selling them, the only real answer is donate your books in
| general. Understand that those that don't get sold at the
| library book sale or whatever will probably end up in
| recycling.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Oh yeah. Part of the pain is that I used to work for a
| library (though not as a librarian) and am therefore familiar
| with the well-intentioned donation concept.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Old programming books really depend on the book: "Sam's teach
| yourself Java in 24 hours"? Or "Structure and Interpretation of
| Computer Programs"?
| korse wrote:
| Really interesting article. I'm quite convinced that digging
| through a heap structure is an excellent way to discover 'new' or
| 'unexpected' knowledge for oneself.
|
| I can see from at least one comment that there is some
| disagreement, but I've been frustrated for years that as the
| internet has evolved into its modern form, the 'heap-like'
| structure of Usenet/gopher directory/irc server LIST command has
| been mostly lost/deprecated.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| If you want random book suggestions online:
| https://recommendmeabook.com/
|
| Or you can just search a few random words on
| Google/Amazon/whatever, then pick a random title.
|
| The article's other point seems to be that modern literature is
| too curated and bland. I don't know if the author's joking or if
| they're just not very well-read.
| frockington1 wrote:
| I've heard others mention that modern literature is too
| curated. I am also confused when I hear it. We are living in
| the age of digital books, digital reviews, and self publishing.
| There is more choice than ever and it's easier to be informed
| than ever. Anyone complaining about bland books needs to spend
| an extra 30 minutes on duck duck go and try something new
| Aboh33 wrote:
| I haven't read a new fiction-based novel in ages. Does anyone
| know if smartphone texting and usage encroaches the storyline
| like it does with modern tv shows?
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Seems like there's a ton of stuff out there, so it's kinda
| whatever you want.
|
| No need to read just new-publications, though. If you want
| to read Greek mythology, Euclid's " _Elements_ ", biblical
| texts, or whatever, it's out there.
| Aboh33 wrote:
| Yeah I have a lot of older books, but was specifically
| asking about modern novels and if texting/smartphones
| were written into the plots like all modern tv shows
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Seems like you should be able to find just about
| anything. There're a _lot_ of books out there.
|
| Are you looking for a narrative set in modern-day
| America, but in an alternative timeline in which
| texting/smartphones weren't a thing?
| WalterBright wrote:
| I enjoy used bookstores, too. But they do curate what they choose
| to stock. I like to troll the book sections in thrift stores. I'm
| sure they separate out ones that have collector value, but the
| rest just get dumped on the shelves. Best of all, if one or three
| turn out to be duds, there's no onerous investment in them. Just
| donate them back!
| shannifin wrote:
| I also love searching for books in thrift stores, so much
| cheaper, and sometimes there are treasures like autographed
| first editions of Tom Clancy or Oliver Sacks books (which I
| flipped on eBay for >$100, ka-ching!)
|
| Sometimes I'll also go to the thrift stores, buy some books in
| good condition that I think will be resellable (usually
| nonfiction) and sell them to the used bookstore for credit to
| spend on their better (but pricier) selection.
| gjm11 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that if I found a book I'd just bought was an
| autographed first edition, I'd keep it unless I had cashflow
| problems: unless there's some sort of temporary fad going on,
| its present value is a pretty good predictor of its future
| value, and if you've bought the thing expecting to enjoy
| reading it then it doesn't become a less enjoyable read just
| because it's also valuable. (I guess you might want to be
| more careful about how you read it.)
|
| But I don't know much about how prices of these things
| behave. Maybe you expect that by the time you might be
| wanting to sell, those authors will have been forgotten and
| the books won't have any special monetary value any more?
| shannifin wrote:
| Oh yeah, I keep too much already. I buy some for the sole
| purpose of flipping. You just wouldn't find such treasures
| in a used bookstore for so cheap.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Over here the thrift / secondhand stores are usually charities,
| so it's kinda expected the employees are volunteered or low
| paid.
|
| I'm confident that since they work there, they get first
| pickings of anything of value - jewelry, rare albums/books,
| collectibles - before it ends up for sale. I can't begrudge
| them that, they offer a valuable service and all, but at the
| same time I'm jealous of others who find great stuff at thrift
| stores.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The better used books are sold by the thrift stores on
| Amazon. It's pretty obvious they pull those out before they
| reach the shelves. It only makes sense.
|
| Of course, they overlook some good stuff and it winds up on
| the shelves, too.
|
| I don't begrudge the staff from picking out what they want.
|
| I also know that quite a bit of the donations are simply sent
| straight to the dump.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| I read/listen to lots of nonfiction books(30 so far this year)
| and the only benefit of buying books instead of using a Library
| is being able to write notes in them.
|
| With digital copies I'll screenshot a page.
|
| Not sure what is better, both seem to have their problems.
| Underlining requires flipping through every page. Screenshotting
| gives you more and less information than you need.
|
| But library digital books are free and don't require
| transportation to obtain.
|
| As a side note, read science, history and philosophy books. It's
| mind boggling how much better these books are than social media.
| If a book sucks, move onto the next one(or tell yourself you will
| read it later).
| yodsanklai wrote:
| To me, the main benefit of buying books is that I can keep them
| for reference, I often use technical books for years. Old books
| also have a sentimental value for me and I'm having a hard time
| getting rid of them.
|
| BTW, I would never write anything in a book. I wonder if I'm
| the only one.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > BTW, I would never write anything in a book. I wonder if
| I'm the only one.
|
| You're not. I don't consider myself the final owner of the
| things I possess.
| Jwarder wrote:
| I like seeing little notes from prior readers. References
| to other works, question marks, and angry exclamation
| points are all fun to see.
|
| Underlining or highlighting can be interesting to see what
| the other reader thought was important. Highlighters can be
| distracting when they overdo it, but even then it can be
| fun to see where the highlighting tapers off were the prior
| reader just gave up.
|
| But dog ears or times when someone folded a whole page in
| half is just painful.
| hcs wrote:
| I rarely write in a book besides my name in pencil in the
| front. But when I see an error that I can't ignore, I'll make
| a copyediting mark or note in the margin so I can move on.
| Very occasionally I'll get a book that I need to argue with,
| and then the margins get filled, sorry to anyone who
| eventually finds these.
|
| I think my reluctance is mostly about keeping a book in the
| state I got it, since I do frequently mark up interesting
| sections of PDFs in my e-reader.
| thom wrote:
| I love second hand bookshops. The smell of old books is probably
| up there with the glug of wine into a glass in terms of instead
| relaxation and visceral anticipation (I don't really drink
| anymore but I've not kicked the book habit).
|
| I managed to build a decent sci-fi collection almost purely from
| charity shops. It was fascinating to me to map out the relative
| fortunes of charities just by their second hand book prices.
| Cancer charities always seemed quite flush, the shops well kept,
| the books priced in whole pounds. Charities for elderly people
| usually had the best prices (and for me the best selection),
| perhaps because much of the stock was bequeathed in bulk. I'd be
| sure to overpay for my bag of 20 novels for less than a fiver, it
| always felt like a steal.
|
| My favourite finds are old chess books, especially old books
| about chess programming. One of my favourite ways to learn a
| subject is following its history, from primitive approaches
| through successively more complex and effective ideas.
|
| It's always been infinitely comforting to me that even these
| cheap, dilapidated stacks of paper each contained whole worlds,
| days of entertainment for pennies. I got the same feeling about
| computers from a young age, the fractal quality of always being
| able to dive deeper, never hitting walls. In some ways I feel sad
| that these days I get caught up on authors not publishing the
| next book in a series (some for many years) or having to wait for
| the next series of something I've just binged on Netflix, or even
| being forced to wait for the next episode of something. Second
| hand bookshops remind me of a different (and perhaps more
| sustainable) pace of life.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > the glug of wine into a glass
|
| damn that gave me a cool visual in my mind, as well as a
| yearning feeling. nice language usage!
| Pulcinella wrote:
| My experience with used book stores lately is the opposite of
| many other comments here.
|
| It's hard to find anything that's not books 2 through the
| penultimate book of a airport novel trade paperback at my local
| second-hand book store. There is a bit of a "no one goes there
| anymore, it's too crowded" feeling.
|
| Because of how easy it is to look up the going rate for a used
| book online these days, a lot of books go straight to eBay/Amazon
| and don't even make it to the store. Those that make it to the
| store are set aside to be sold online and don't make it to the
| shelves. Those that make it to the shelves are almost immediately
| bought if there is any interest in them at all before you even
| make it to the store. The end result is that the books on the
| shelves are the books no one wants and you probably won't either.
|
| The same thing has been happening with used video games where the
| only games on the shelves are old versions of yearly licensed
| sports games.
| Arrath wrote:
| > It's hard to find anything that's not books 2 through the
| penultimate book of a airport novel trade paperback at my local
| second-hand book store. There is a bit of a "no one goes there
| anymore, it's too crowded" feeling.
|
| To be entirely fair, that has been my experience at typical new
| book stores, too. I don't know how many times I've gone into a
| B&N or Borders to find books 2, 3, 5, and 8 of some series.
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(page generated 2021-07-21 23:02 UTC)