McKay's Used Books
William Gibson seems a bit unnerved at the way "every class of human artifact is being sorted and rationalized by this economically driven machine," referring to eBay.
I suppose if I wanted to blow a few hundred dollars I could locate and accumulate fondly-remembered childhood toys and scratch all the book titles off my To Buy list. But there's still something to be said for the serendipitous find.
McKay's has long been a favorite haunt and source for reading material, and I was disappointed when their nearby location shut down. This weekend we tried a local alternative and found that any ratty paperback was $7 or more, so we trekked on down to Manassas. Within minutes of walking in to McKay's, I found a pair of books that had been on my list for years. Both in dust jackets, in very good shape, ten dollars total. Oh, both were signed by the author as well.
There were many other books for one to three dollars that I might have picked up in the days of shelf space and leisure time, but for now I just grabbed one, and later realized that I had already read it.
So it appears it is still possible to be a "picker."
I suppose if I wanted to blow a few hundred dollars I could locate and accumulate fondly-remembered childhood toys and scratch all the book titles off my To Buy list. But there's still something to be said for the serendipitous find.
McKay's has long been a favorite haunt and source for reading material, and I was disappointed when their nearby location shut down. This weekend we tried a local alternative and found that any ratty paperback was $7 or more, so we trekked on down to Manassas. Within minutes of walking in to McKay's, I found a pair of books that had been on my list for years. Both in dust jackets, in very good shape, ten dollars total. Oh, both were signed by the author as well.
There were many other books for one to three dollars that I might have picked up in the days of shelf space and leisure time, but for now I just grabbed one, and later realized that I had already read it.
So it appears it is still possible to be a "picker."