D.C. Field Notes #2: Analyzing My Relationship with New Books
Bookstores reviews from Ellicott City and Washington D.C.
Over the last six months since Rebecca and I started City Reads, I’ve visited way more new bookstores than I had in the last couple of years combined. So far, I haven’t bought much. I still enjoy the experience, walking around all the crisp covers and carefully arranged shelves. The other bookstores patrons are much more intelligent looking than myself. But pulling the trigger on a new book purchase? Rare.
I pondered this even more after reading
’s recent newsletter about his own reading strategies. In it, he states: “If I see a book that interests me, I always just buy it. The upside of interesting and useful new information vastly outweighs the downside of being out $20 or $30 dollars.”On a spiritual level, I agree with this. The wisdom contained in books is worth way more than $20. On a behavioral level, I’m nowhere near his position. Bring that dollar amount down to $4-7, and I’m in. Do I value the knowledge of books, less? I hope not.
Money is a consideration of course. I read 40-50 books a year (probably a middle-of-the-pack number for self-proclaimed readers?) and were each of them purchased new, we’re talking upwards of $1,000 a year on books. I also can’t help but feel, when I buy a new book, that I could have spent the money getting four used books.
I enjoy hunting for a used book. I’ll hear about a book online, on a podcast, or from a friend and write it down, returning to the list whenever I visit a used bookstore. Sometimes I get lucky, other times I’m waiting more than a year before I stumble onto something I want. I took me nearly three years to finally come across a copy of The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama.
The search for books is analogous to reading, for me. Turning a page and getting deeper into the heart of a novel is like sorting through a used bookshelf. Each sentence and each shelf holds an idea, but only a few contain real pearls, and that’s what I read for and shop for.
Finally, as I mentioned in my newsletter last month, we were a library-going family growing up. New books in the home were not rare, necessarily, but they were special. I recall ordering a new Calvin and Hobbes at least yearly when the Scholastic Bookfair came to town. Every Christmas, our stocking contained a new book, a tradition I plan to continue. We bought all the Harry Potter’s new, including a few 6 a.m. runs to a local store to pick up a copy on the much-anticipated release date.
I suppose all of these things equate to the feeling that buying new books is something of an event.
Perhaps I’ll get to the point where buying new books comes as naturally as a used book. It probably won’t feel less special than it did as a child.
Bookstores
Backwater Books - Ellicott City, Maryland
Art from local painters decorates the walls and large, comfortable velvet seats everywhere. The upstairs also hosts “The Bibliopub”, a small bar serving a few local beers and wines with a large wooden bar and more cool seating that could sit around 12 people… read more
Bookstores, on their own, are tough businesses. Yet so are restaurants. It’s hard to know if someone would specifically come for one or the other. From my observation, it seemed like most were there for the food, but browsed the books as they waited for their friends to arrive… read more