Selling Low

In retrospect, I cannot bear any ill will against the school bookstores anyplace I went to college. I'd like to say that I did not then either, but it's increasingly difficult to remember. Of course, the cost of those books seems and seemed criminal, but I suppose the guilty party is somewhere further upstream. The store probably had little choice but to pass along obscene costs to the students. I wish they would have paid more to get those books back, but it all makes sense the way it worked. I would have done the same.

Thank God I don't have to deal with that kind of thing anymore. It's been years since I had to entertain the idea of paying a hundred dollars for a book which there was only a passing chance of needing and less chance still of getting anything substantial out of. There is the used bookstore though, and it operates on a similar (if fairer) basis. I hadn't really made use of one in years, but I did the other day. It was interesting.

With high hopes I filled a canvas bag with tomes that I hoped to be rid of, but of course I knew well that I stood little chance of interesting the storeowner in any more than a few of them, and so it proved that he accepted perhaps five or six and passed on many more. I bought three books while I was there and got some modest amount of store credit. Somehow the way he explained the system of value assigned to hardcovers and various forms of paperbacks made no sense to me, but I trusted that he would not rip me off.

I have not checked books out of the library in a while, as I have been reading my own books and those of friends, and I wonder if I might return to the habit of buying books and selling back those of them that the store still wants as I did once upon a time. There is a certain pleasure in hanging on to completed books, even as I feel a compulsion to get rid of books for which I have no more real use. It remains to be seen how I will proceed.