Let’s get this straight.  Get it out in the open before I get this blog post rolling.  I love new books.  As a writer, I think everyone should go out and show their support by buying novels as soon as they come out in the stores.  Help those authors onto the Best-Seller lists, whether hardcover or softcover.  It’s an even better idea to visit your local store and get a copy of my novel, A White Wind Blew, on March 5th.  I even think Nooks and Kindles are cool, although I doubt I’ll ever own one, unless I get one to play big-screen Ninja Fruit.  I’m a traditionalist.  I need the actual book in my hands.  Pages to turn.  Covers to look at.  Something to collect and put on my shelves, which brings me to the main point of this post—used books.  As much as I like new books, if every book on the shelves at my house would have been purchased new, I wouldn’t have been able to afford my house.

I went into Half Price Books today to find some historical stuff for research and was reminded of how cool used books stores are—they’ve got EVERYTHING!  Everything a new bookstore would have but more, and it’s all cheaper.  People walk around pushing grocery carts and they fill them up like they’re attacking the chips and soda lane at Kroger.  Others walk in with ripped brown bags full of books to sell…and milk crates full of stuff, hoping to score a few bucks to use on another used book, or cash for lunch, which I’ve done before.  Barnes & Noble might have Starbucks, but the used books stores have metal thermoses labeled decaf and regular, and Styrofoam cups to boot.  I’m not a coffee drinker, but it even appeared that the coffee was inexpensive as well (dare I say, used), and it was just there for the taking.  So I settled for the ice water.

I found what I was looking for in the historical true crime section, and then some.  Found some books that I didn’t even know existed.  Perfect for my research.  And then it donned on me.  Nearly all of my favorite authors were discovered in used books stores.  New books have a shelf life.  If they don’t sell, they move on.  Used books circulate like crazy, some seem to reproduce, others move from this shelf to that shelf, go to this house and then back again.  They have a history.  They’re mysterious.  Some look weathered enough to have a story of their own—a story within a story.  Some people leave their names inside the front cover.  I often wonder what the previous owner looked like.  How many previous owners?  Did they ever take it into the restroom with them?  What’s that stain on page 157?  But those are all chances you take when you buy a book that’s been through the ringer.  And some of the used books even look new, with nice spines and pages that haven’t been swollen from a prolonged stay in a humid car.  But back to my favorite authors and I’ll wrap this up.  My first Greg Iles book, Spandau Phoenix, was a used book.  I bought A Widow for One Year by John Irving used, and then went on to buy the rest of his novels.  The same for Pat Conroy’s Beach Music.  Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind.  Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full.  Ken Follett’s Eye of the Needle.  Caleb Carr’s The Alienist.  Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River.  Stephen King’s Four Past Midnight.  I loved these books so much that I had to start buying their newest one’s as soon as they were released.  So, for that reason, new book stores need used book stores as well, kind of like a farm system with baseball, as far as recruiting new readers for authors.  Used book stores are a staple of life…kind of like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Maybe that’s what the stain was on page 157.

I’ve still yet to see that used e-reader section though…