Sunday, April 13, 2008

Of Used Bookstores and Bliss

I have been mourning my move to Chattanooga if only because I am no longer as close to my favorite place on earth, the Half Price Books store. It was the first place I found someone who would pay me for my collection so I could refresh my shelves with whatever subject was my current obsession. My last huge trade in was before my move from Lexington back to Long Island, and I let go of most of my economics, statistics, and political science/international law collection. I used my earnings to bulk up on books on goddess traditions, witchcraft, wiccan traditions, acupuncture, yoga and reiki. (It was one of those phases where I was exploring.)


I was told about McKay's used books (and various other stuffs) when I moved to Chattanooga, but hadn't made the time to go, for a number of reasons. I was busy. I didn't have the money. I was afraid what might happen if I loosed myself in a cheap bookstore when I have no room for additional shelves in my teensy apartment.


Today seemed like a good day to go, so I loaded up some boxes with books I couldn't see myself reading in the foreseeable future (my Harry Potters, which I've read, some Stephen Kings and Tom Clancys, a few pieces of actual literature like the Brontes - ugh, can't stand them - and Little Women, a boatload of paperbacks, and two large Jane's World War II collections). I still haven't been able to part with the last of my international relations and political theory collection, and I'm still holding out hope that I'll read Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules. I'm also not quite ready to get rid of my little occult section, nor to trim down my collection of cookbooks quite yet.


Anyway, I headed to McKay's with two carryable boxes of books, expecting them to give me about $20 or $30 that I could then spend without guilt on some new (to me) books of poetry. I browsed a bit and picked up more than I could afford, waiting for my number to come up to see my return value. Imagine my surprise when the guy said, "Cash or trade?", I replied "Trade," and he gave me a voucher for $135.00.


That's right. One hundred thirty five smackaroos. Needless to say, I dumped the books I had already chosen into a cart and headed back to clean out the poetry section of everything I was interested in.


My loot, you ask? See what I was able to bring home:


James Dickey: The Selected Poems


Czeslaw Milosz: New and Collected Poems 1931-2001


The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology ed. by Robert Bly


Loving in the War Years by Cherrie Moraga


The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry ed. by McClatchy


Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize


The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo (this is my 2nd copy so I can mark it up)


W.H. Auden: Selected Poems


Rudyard kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (1939)


Perrine's 'Sound and Sense' - An Introduction to Poetry


Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West


Between Innocence and Peace: Favourite Poems of Ireland


The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry by Addonizio & Laux


Robert Lowell: Selected Poems


H.D.: Collected Poems 1912-1944 (Hilda Doolittle)


Poets Against the War


In a Time of Violence by Eavan Boland


The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke


The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje


World War One British Poets


Rita Dove: Selected Poems


The Other Voice: Essays on Modern Poetry by Octavio Paz


Transformations by Anne Sexton


Adrienne Rich, Poems Selected and New 1950-1974


Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot


The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America ed. by Hongo


Early Ripening: American Women's Poetry Now Ed. by Marge Piercy


Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Orpheus and Company: Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology Ed. by Denicola


And I still have about $27 left on that trade-in ticket. And I'm already greedily glancing around for books I neither want nor need, though those pickings are getting slim at this point. I just found my new favorite weekend hangout. Score!