Supporting locally independent bookstores

This past Saturday was Independent Bookstore Day, and I saw no more fitting way to celebrate than to go down (or up, or whatever spatial direction St. Cloud is from SJU) to Books Revisited, a particular favorite store of mine, where they were celebrating with 20% off everything. It was a bustling, busy sight—parents with small children rushing about, elderly couples meandering through the shelves and one (1) insufferable humanities major.

As I expected to, I spent far above my pay grade. Alas. But what is exactly so special about a used bookstore? What does it have to offer that something like a Barnes and Noble, or even buying books online, cannot?

The used bookstore is interesting because it is uncertain—there is no guarantee what you will find. Going to Barnes and Noble is much the same as listening to a playlist with all your favorite songs or rewatching a favorite movie or series—it is an enjoyable experience, but ultimately familiar and predictable. Even the ‘banned books’ section displays less of a social and intellectual challenge as much as a sort of aesthetic—what’s the point of reading a banned book if you can’t own a tote bag about it? And the ultimate arbiter of the experience at a Barnes and Noble is Barnes and Noble, and their goal is not necessarily to educate or enlighten, but to make money. So, there is a consistency in what they offer—they sell what sells.

On the contrary, to quote James V. Schall, one of the last great Jesuits, “The used book store, unlike the catalog or even the library, puts us in a place where we can come across and buy some unsuspected title that turns out to get at the essence of what is”. To be in a used bookstore is to open yourself to surprise, an encounter with a book you would never think to buy previously. Even in my most recent haul, I happened to come across a very nice bound edition of the Jerome Biblical Commentaries for 20 dollars, a collection of Teilhard de Chardin’s letters (look him up!) and a nice little collection of Henry James’ short stories, amongst other things. Not by advertising, but by a chance glance at a spine of a book, was I convinced into buying. These books were buried amid shelves of other numerous (and equally meritorious) titles, and it was only by an impression made in a moment of passivity where I was able to come across these books.

I will end with another Schall quote: “I often think… that the bookstores that will save civilization are not online, nor on campuses nor named Borders, Barnes & Noble, Dalton or Crown. They are the used bookstores, in which, for a couple of hundred dollars, one can still find, with some diligence, the essential books of our culture, from the Bible and Shakespeare to Plato, Augustine and Pascal.”