Second-hand Bookshops Will Be My Downfall

I visited my local Oxfam bookstore the other day, coming home with a small stash of readable goodies (details below). There's just something about a second-hand bookshop I can't resist, and they have the incredible habit of parting me from my cash. Back in my west-end Glasgow days, when there were a variety of such establishments to cater to my habit, it wasn't unheard of for me to stumble to the counter with a pile so high I could no longer see. Even now, a book is my preferred method of spending the last of my pennies - nothing in the bank? Can't afford the gas bill? Living on toast for a fortnight? Oh, never mind, a quick book will make it all feel better...

Second-hand stores have several advantages over the regular shops. For one thing, the books are cheaper, and thus you can buy more at one go. For another, the stock can be far more interesting. Books long out-of-print and unavailable elsewhere (well, before the invention of the internet anyway) pop up unexpectedly, and, unlike in first-hand retailers, regular turnover of stock and titles makes for a far more worthwhile browsing experience. With the older book, even the inscriptions at the front, or scribbles in the margin can be interesting, revealing something of the past owners.

In some ways, I prefer the process of buying a second-hand book to the actual reading of it - the promise of ideas unexplored and stories unheard can be far more alluring than the reality revealed upon opening the pages. So there you go, second-hand books are but a cheap metaphor after all...


My latest bargains:

James McLevy - Casebook of a Victorian Detective possibly an inspiration for Arthur Conan-Doyle. Or possibly not

Truman Capote - In Cold Blood: A True Account Of A Multiple Murder And Its Consequences slightly more respectable than buying a True Crime magazine

Alastair Phillips - Glasgow's Herald 1783-1983 Two Hundred Years Of A Newspaper the history of one of Scotland's main papers

Andrew Collins - Where Did It All Go Right? Growing Up Normal In The 70s a riposte to the "my childhood hell" school of publishing

Charlotte Greig - Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Girl Groups From The 50s On The Ronettes! The Shangri-las! Bananarama! Published in 1989, so no Spice Girls. Drat

Peter Carey - True History Of The Kelly Gang "is the song of Australia, and it sings its protest in a voice at once crude and delicate, menacing and heart-wrenching" it says here

Ann Wroe - Perkin biography of Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the English throne, who claimed to be one of the Princes in the Tower...

Alison Weir - The Princes In The Tower a take on the story of the two Princes, sons of Edward IV, imprisoned and allegedy killed at the behest of their uncle, Richard III