Second Hand Rows

Any book lover will tell you there are two joys of visiting a second hand bookshop – finding a book you have been looking for, and finding one you didn’t know you wanted. I’m not sure which is better.

There aren’t as many second hand book shops as there used to be. A combination of charity shops and Amazon have meant they are less profitable and they are often run by people who love being surrounded by books rather than those who just want a successful business.

I look in charity shops, too, but most of the books there are former best sellers or those people have acquired because they think they should have them like encyclopedias or fashionable cook books. You will often find parts of collections cleared from the homes of deceased relatives but as someone with particular enthusiasms they rarely match those on offer. Military books are just one area I have no interest in and there are lots of those.

I also use Amazon, despite its record on paying tax and giving its workers decent salary and conditions, because I can often find books of interest with a category search and lots of scrolling. It is not as much fun as finding a physical copy in a shop, though.

It is particularly gratifying to find a book I want in a shop that has a degree of disorder. It’s a bit like finding buried treasure. It’s a fine balance – you don’t want total chaos or total order. Just enough organisation so things are roughly in sections, but not in alphabetical order. Piles of recently acquired books that are not yet shelved are also good as they are small enough to check through in the hope of finding a gem.

One of my favourite local bookshops that gets it just right is Barnabees Books in Westleton. As well as having the right mix of order and chaos it isn’t overfull of popular paperbacks. Westleton is a bit of a book village as there is another second hand bookshop there – Chapel Books.

In case any booksellers are reading this, if you have collections on ‘Pataphysics and Alfred Jarry, surrealism, Oulipo, Fin de Siecle Paris, Lewis Carroll or mathematical fiction, get in touch and we may be able to do business.