The timeless benefits of used books
The value of secondhand books or books of the moment past is that you often come across ones that are no longer in bookstores or are out of print altogether. The Main Library bookstore, where I have volunteered on Saturday mornings for three years, made about $20,000 a year for the library to purchase new books and brought me so much reading pleasure I can hardly describe it.
Books appeared that I never would have known about; old and new books, books I’d read, lost or passed on and wanted to reread. I was able to spread the wealth by giving books away, often to people I hardly knew because a paperback cost $1 and hardbacks were $2.
The book-find I cherish most is Tante Marie’s French Kitchen, used by housewives in the ’50s and ’60s. I taught in France in the ’60s, and the book brought back meals served in the teachers’ dining room, especially one where I looked down into a plate of unfamiliar bones (hare). Aimed to save time and money, the recipes show how basic French cooking is, in spite of 35 recipes for sauces, 15 ways to make an omelet and ways to cook liver, brains and sweetbreads.
The recipe I dwell on and want to reproduce is for Coquilles Saint-Jacques, which includes a suggestion to go to the seashore and gather the shells into which the scallop mixture is placed.
This practical little book, with its inauspicious, tobaccocolored spine, never called out to be chosen, and that was the joy of volunteering. While straightening the shelves, making sure the books were aligned, you could look the collection over before customers came.
Not to mention the pleasures of regular customers whose faces and tastes became familiar, smiling in memory because they always gravitated to “their” particular shelf — history or biography, photographic books in the art section, mystery books, the Southwest section or the hand span of books in philosophy.
Time moves on. The 33⅓ records have been replaced with a cart of CDs. The shelves have been rearranged, and under new leadership, the workforce has increased and the hours extended.
Certain books keep reappearing, and I buy them over and over again to pass along because I love them so much. Bless me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl, The Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfous, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wales, Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Laurie Lisle’s Portrait of an Artist, anything by John Gardner, any of Michael McGarrity’s mysteries and Sallie Bingham’s memoir, Passion and Prejudice.
Then there are books that people are talking about and are good for grazing but not worth at-home book space, but keep one in the conversation. I do what many do — buy, read and return.
This reflection began as an apology to my granddaughters for dog-eared books I’m sending to mark their birthdays — The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts for Madeline and an illustrated book on Greek mythology for Emma, pulled from the shelves of the vest pocket library for the joy of the chase and the thrill of the bargain.