QUILLBLOG

Old is gold

Popmatters.com, that marvellous repository of all things culture-vulture-esque, plays to our nerdy bookishness this month with a series of essays examining the wonderful world of secondhand books. With two new essays posted each Wednesday, the series takes a look at everything from contributors’ favourite used-book shops to the economics of selling secondhand books. Perhaps the most charming of the lot is Erika Nanes’ “The Dust Test,” in which she judges potential dates based on the way they approach secondhand books:

Some women evaluate men by their taste in books; I do it by their taste in bookstores. The secondhand bookstore is, after all, an entirely different animal from its shiny new book-selling kin. Crowded, badly ventilated (I’m talking to you, Strand), with floor plans that often seem deliberately designed to confuse the hapless readers wandering inside, the used bookstore does not appeal to those who prefer their pleasures easily won.

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The bookstore test can also answer the question of how well a potential boyfriend deals with order, or with its absence. Let’s face it, secondhand bookstores are not for everyone. In some bookstores of my acquaintance—Acres of Books, near Los Angeles, comes to mind—the books have spilled from the shelves and now take up residence in piles stacked on the floor, usually right in the turning ratio between one side of an aisle and the other. These encampments are not part of any section and demonstrate absolutely no observable order. Men who like their world neatly organized, who get flustered when their CDs are out of alphabetical order, won’t last long in such a place. Which is useful information, right? After all, sex—good sex—is nothing if not disorganized.

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