Feeding your inner voyeur, and other fun
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 
A cool poster for a used book store, with clickable goodness.I just realized that I have this thing for used books, in all their unfettered glory. Complete with cracked spines, dog-eared pages, with coffee stains and smears of unknown origin. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a Downy-fresh, virginal hardback plucked from the top shelf of my local Barnes & Noble—but for some reason, used books just seem to have a little extra mojo. They have a history. They have a past.
Like my used copy of Kitchen Confidential. It still has the boarding pass/bookmark of one Edward Kent Davis. I hope your flight from Salt Lake City to Honolulu went smoothly. I also hope you weren’t one of those patient-zero-type tuberculosis carriers (Oh it’s nothing…cough…cough…)
I have a pre-suffrage era book called Fighting Modern Evils that warns us about the dangers of non-white races (that be me) and such nefarious activities as (gasp) dancing! The inscription says the book once belonged to a Mrs. Fred Foster, whom I imagine knew how to throw one hoot-nanny of a quilting bee.
At a garage sale I picked up some 30s era math books. Why? I dunno. Because they were old and interesting––and cost a whopping 25 centavos. Inside were completed homework assignments. A boy named Will earned an A- in Geometry.
I think this fascination with pre-read books probably goes all the way back to grade school. I remember sitting with my friends in the library in the 5th grade and peeking into books just to see who had previously checked them out. This was back when our silverback of a librarian would stamp the date inside the cover, right next to where you signed your name. Speaking of which, Sean Wilson––what exactly were you doing reading Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
And if you’re bored and wanna have a little fun, here are a some used book ideas:
- Draw a treasure map on a cocktail napkin and leave it in the next paperback you trade in at your local used bookery.
- Throw in a hastily scribbled to-do list that includes picking up milk, bread and a nice hunk of fissionable uranium.
- Or maybe just a pen note in an easy to solve monoalphabetic cipher. Like this: DUFPB QWYT YTYX VXZJAPJJ! (Here's a hint, the key letter is "A").
Hey, the world’s a surreal place. Let’s keep it that way.
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