Used-book uselessness

[dr_whom]

There's not a lot that makes me feel more useless than a gift-certificate to a used book store.

I have like $7 left on a gift certificate to BMV, and I was like, well, I've got a long road trip coming up and I may as well buy something to read. And… I wandered around the store for half an hour and eventually left it empty-handed. For every book, I was either like, 'well, I like that book, but I know that because I've read it before, so no need to buy it,' or 'I haven't read that, so I don't know if I'd like it, so I don't know if it's worth buying.' That's what all my bookstore experiences are like. And since it's a used book store, the handful of books that I specifically looked for because they'd been recommended or whatever were ones they didn't have.

I'm just… really bad at bookstores, I guess. They cause me an inordinate amount of anxiety.

Comments

[landofnowhere]

"at libraries, you can get whatever you want to read, for free. So if you're going to Spend Money on a book, there must be a Very Good Reason for it, a book that you not only want to read but also Have."

I kind of grew up with that attitude; except that I had an aunt who gave me bookstore gift certificates every birthday for a few years, so I got practice making those sorts of decisions. (Many of the books I got were not all that great, but that's fine.) Often I go into bookstores just to be in a place with books, not because I'm expecting to get anything.

If you're looking for a book-buying experience to give you warm fuzzies, and have an elementary teacher friend who could use more books in their classroom library, I can recommend going to a used/remainders bookstore with cheap kids' books and getting books you liked as a kid / award-winning books to donate to your friend (and read first if you want to!)