I doubt I will ever forgive this area for its lack of bookstores. When I lived in Seattle you couldn't swing a sack of spiders without hitting a used book store. You could not walk down the street with certain people (who you love very much) without being pulled aside into a bookstore for an indeterminate period. (If the store was Twice Sold Tales*, which had cats, your day was pretty much spoken for.)
Living in the University District of Seattle, it seemed natural to be surrounded by entertainments for literate folks. One would expect no less of College Park, Maryland, the municipal albumen of the University of Maryland**. Indeed, the only book store in apparent striking distance of my new place (or for that matter my old place, a stop south on the green line, in Hyattsville) was the UMD college bookstore. The only time I can recall going in there was to buy a board game, of which they had plenty--I don't recall them selling any books although I'm sure there must have been one or two. Anyway, that's gone now too. They uprooted to relocate and, like a demon eight miles from a suitable host, vanished quietly from the mortal realm.
There is a library nearby. The Hyattsville library is actually quite nice, even if it's a bit of a walk away now--but then I learn that it's to be closed for complete destruction and rebuilding soon. I don't know what makes that necessary, and apparently I'm not the only person who isn't in a hurry to see the place torn down.
But I didn't come here to complain about that. It happened that the church which I have recently (if sporadically) been attending had a used book sale, and Girlfriend and I resolved to descend upon it like locusts. As she has a classroom library to stock, she did the most damage, but I am pleased with what I turned up for myself.
I picked up the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction, apparently the only issue which had been donated. The stories in it would have been current when I was four years old, and I certainly wonder what the genre was like at the time, when the internet was nascent and the Hubble Telescope was still being put together.
I found a large hardcover collection of Dashiell Hammett novels, and I hope to get in touch with some of the stories that I know from retelling and pastiche. One, Red Harvest, is a story that comes up again and again (in Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, arguably the Conan the Barbarian story "Red Nails," and other, less notable iterations), and which I may try my own hand at if I get around to it.
Perhaps the most interesting find of the day was The Thorough-Bred Poor Gentleman's Book; or, How to Live in London on £100 a Year, a reprint of a slim handbook from 1835 which is essentially what the title claims: a guide to living frugally as a gentleman. It has that offhand wit that seems to happen naturally in books over a century old, but also seems to be a legitimate study in the plight of the declining English nobility in the 19th century. What a dilemma is is, surely, to be constrained in one's income and to be "above" doing anything for oneself--never mind taking definite action to earn more money!
What's said is interesting. What's not said is perhaps more so. One piece of straightforward advice reads: "Never get into a cab or hackney-coach when you can possibly walk." But it is never suggested that you would consider eating fewer than two meals a day outside your own home, make your own bed, or wash your own clothes--although you may apparently brush your own clothes without demeaning yourself, and the maidservant will appreciate it.
It makes me appreciate the freedom of the middle class, to eat my own spaghetti on occasion and do my own laundry without being thought less of.
This, of course, is part of the pleasure of used book sales as opposed to your typical bookstore. Foraging encourages a varied diet.
* Now, sadly, a Chase bank.
** Which this year broke into Playboy Magazine's list of America's top 10 party schools, wouldn't you know.
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