Where I Buy Books

I was browsing on our lastest posts before I started my own, and I came across Scout’s post on book-buying options. So instead of making up a post on my almost nonexistent weekly reads, I decided to expand on my book-buying history. 

While I was attending high school in Rochester, NY, I was a greedy book buyer (which I still am but with slightly more self-control) regardless of my status as an international student, meaning that I have to figure out a way to stock or transport those books upon graduation. I remember that my first purchase of books in Rochester was at Dollar Tree, where I spent 3 dollars on a King James Bible, a Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, and a murder mystery whose title I can no longer remember. It was such a bargain and I recommend all of you guys to try it out. (But you may have to depend on your luck for the kind of books they have in stock.) Fun fact, I once bought a seemingly unpopular Irish novel from Dollar Tree before I graduated from high school, and later on, it turned out to be one of the required readings for my Intro to Lit class (FYI it is Paul Murray’s The Mark and the Void). Then I discovered Barnes & Noble, which is like a standard bookseller. Yet as a high school student without a lot of money to spare I purchased mostly from their bargain books section. They are brand new copies, and if you look carefully there are quite a few interesting books, so I recommend trying it out if you don’t mind the big stickers with ‘bargain book’ on the covers. 

Later on, after volunteering at a church sale, I discovered the world of used books, which has saved me a crazy amount of money. During that church sale paperbacks were sold at $ 0.5, while on their last day of each sale it was $1 for a whole BAG of books, no matter how many you can fit in the bag. I have ever since been exploring options to purchase used books. The Barnes & Noble near where I lived had a secondhand books section, and the books there were less worn out than other secondhand booksellers. I once purchased a copy of The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet in a next-to-new condition there for only ~$5 (it was a GIANT book if anyone knows what I’m talking about). During my first semester of college in Dublin, I was assigned to volunteer at a charity shop, where I ended up purchasing books from them after work. Charity shops are such a phenomenon in Europe comparing to the US, and they have contributed tremendously to my already exploding bookshelf (which cost me a lot of money to deliver back to Boston, that was not the fun part). 

There are great booksellers in the Boston area as well. Despite Trident Bookseller on Newbury Street where they have a cafe inside the store, there is Harvard Bookstore across from the Harvard campus (but is not part of the school’s property), where I purchased Robert Gottlieb’s Avid Reader last year. I also bumped into a used book shop on my way to Chinatown, Brattle Book Shop, where they sell antique books at a relatively low price. I got a three-volume collection of Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby from them for less than $3 each. 

I had started using Amazon only recently (I have been nervous about online shopping), and I found out that even on Amazon you can support independent bookstores by purchasing from them instead of from Prime. There are so many other options other than the default, and used books generally have more options in terms of booksellers. Another score for used books!

I  am a strong advocate for used books. They are cheap in general, and I personally enjoy the yellowed pages where I can possibly discover a note or two from the previous owner. It was like history taking the form of paper for me, and it breaks my heart to see books being sold by weight to recycle. I also collect antique books for my personal interest, which gives me another reason to visit used book stores. The oldest one in my collection is a 1800s bound volume of Harper’s Magazine, which looks exactly like this: