In Praise of Used Bookstores

I made a quick trip up to Dartmouth College and back during this last week (left after work on Tuesday and was back at my office on Friday morning). The ostensible purpose was to attend a performance of the Zedashe Ensemble, as well as a symposium on Georgian culture. The venue served as something of a mini-reunion for 6 of us who traveled together last June, and our Georgian friends associated with the Ensemble.

I pulled off the interstate in central New Hampshire on Wednesday, looking for a local place to eat. I found something even better in Henniker, a stereotypical New England village. Here, I stumbled into one of those marvelous old used bookstores which still pepper the state. Such like are hard to find here in Texas, but seem to be still going strong in the Northeast. This particular establishment contained 155,000 volumes in 2 wonderful, musty floors of a barn-like building. My take was:

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (illus. by Gorey), T. S. Eliot
Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye, Florence King
Anthony Powell: A Life, Michael Barber
The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle by George Sphrantzes, 1401-1407, translated by Marios Philippides
Michael and Natasha: The Life and Love of Michael II, The Last of the Romanov Tsars, Rosemary and Donald Crawford.
The Chronicle of Theophanes (A.D. 602-813), translated by Harry Turtledove
A Lermontov Reader, Guy Daniels
The Heart of a Dog and Other Stories, Mikhail Bulgakov
Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormity in Literature and Politics, Russell Kirk