I visited a brand-new local bookstore today. It is named Rabbit Hole Books (https://www.facebook.com/rabbitholedayton/), a play on the Rabbit character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books. There is a big picture of the Rabbit checking his pocket watch in the front window. A humorous and evocative image to welcome book dorks like me.
It is affiliated with the Dayton Book Fair (https://daytonbookfair.com/). The Dayton
Book Fair is a large yearly book fair, one that I am sure exists in all cities of
a certain size, having enough residents who read to warrant a yearly exchange
of books. They depend on local donations for the books, and price the books cheaply.
The organization makes enough money to sustain
their operations, the book hoarding bibliophile gets a chance to create space
in the deep dark corners of their basement for more books, and other
bibliophiles buy those books to occupy a brand new deep dark corner in their homes.
It is a win-win-win.
The idea of the Rabbit Hole Books is a really good one. The Dayton
Book Fair organization has enough books in their warehouses that they can
curate the collection and sell those books year-round in a brick-and-mortar
location. They had enough books to fill it up while still able to run the
yearly book fair. The bookstore is an extension of the mission, and it lowers
the warehousing cost, keeps more books in circulation, and gives readers a
chance at many different titles, again: win-win-win.
The space occupied by the bookstore is very inviting, made
so by, I imagine, the countless hours spent by the volunteers who put the
location together. It is a street-facing storefront although I had to look a
bit. It is next to a parking garage if
you are looking. They are planning on having a rolled ice cream shop that is collocated
within the store.
The organization of the store is not unlike all the other
bookstores: sections devoted to politics, general history, biography, kids’ books, literature, fiction, foreign
language books, humor, etc. The math and science section is obviously limited
because their selection is dependent on the tastes of the people who donate and
what they donate.
I was eavesdropping on a conversation between someone who is
organizing the store and one of the new volunteers and found out that they will
group nonfiction work of fiction writers together their fiction work, figuring
that if people were interested in the author’s fiction books, they might also be
interested in the author’s nonfiction works as well, which made good sense. There
is a small section devoted solely to books on the craft of writing. A nice
touch.
I had written two other articles on bookstores. One on the bookstore
for everybody (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2020/09/on-books-confessions-of-bookstore-snob.html).
A follow-up article on my favorite independent bookstores. (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2020/10/on-books-confessions-of-bookstore-snob.html).
This is the third kind of bookstore; this is the kind of bookstore that is
extremely enticing and dangerous for my wallet. I tell people that I am polymathic and curious
reader, someone who is eager to read about many topics. In truth, I am just
easily bored and too curious for my own good. The price is usually right in
used bookstores. This place was no exception: every book is a dollar. Oh dear
God! Win-win-win!
I only bought three books this time. They were somewhat
eclectic in the subject matter. One is Mathematics: The Man-Made Universe a
hardback by Sherman K. Stein. I had never heard of it. He was a
mathematics professor at UC-Davis. It was published in 1976. The second book is
paperback published in 2006, a Doris Kearns Goodwin tome about Abraham Lincoln
and his cabinet titled Team of Rivals. The third book is a hardback by Milan
Kundera titled Slowness. I was tempted by a couple of biographies of
Gladstone, since I was just reading about the Gladstone Library in the UK and I
realized that I didn't know that much about Prime Minister Gladstone, but they
were quite hefty and I had already decided to buy Goodwin’s book, so I decided
I didn't need another doorstop type of book. There was also a biography of
Edmund Burke, the Conservative philosopher, yet another hefty tome. I thought I
needed to learn about Burke since he is considered the father of the modern
conservative ideology, a bit of opposition research as it were; but once again,
I thought it was too hefty. I was also once again tempted by the fictional
works of Iris Murdoch sitting on the shelf, even though I only know of her
philosophical books. They even had her husband John Bayley’s Elegy for Iris,
but I was successful in resisting.
What makes this kind of bookstore so dangerous for me? First,
the price is right. A buck a book. I believe any reader worth his salt would kind
of figure: what's a buck, right? The other part of the seductive nature of the
used bookstore is its serendipity: every time we go into this or any used
bookstore is like entering a new bookstore, full of new surprises because the
stocks turnover with regularity but with the exciting uncertainty of the books
that one would find every single time. Finally, I enter the store with no
expectations since I am not looking for anything in particular, I am playing
with house money, no pressure, no wanton desires for a specific tome that I
just have to own. I could walk out empty-handed, a very rare occurrence, although
it has happened; or I can walk out with a very heavy box, or two, which has happened much too often.
Win-win-win.
My book buying habit has evolved into a specific algorithm: if
I'm looking for a specific book on a specific topic, I would go to the many online
used bookstores to look for them. I would inevitably find them. If I could not
find a used copy, and I truly needed to get my hot hands on a copy, I would buy
a newly published book from one of the many independent bookstores that are out
there: Powell’s. Tattered Cover, or Carmichael Books.
But if I wanted to dawdle, to evaluate, to learn about the
unknown, or to read bits of the book that I had picked out from the many
unknown and unfamiliar books that sat in front of me. To borrow this used bookstore’s
motif, I would jump down the rabbit hole, try all the potions, meet all the Cheshire
Cats, Red Queens, White Queens, Carpenters, Walruses, and oysters, and have my
own grand adventures while never leaving the store. I usually spend 45 minutes to
an hour, maybe more on these journeys of exploration. The pressure of trying to
find something specific is gone. It is now time to enjoy the uncertainty of the
book shopping experience and the serendipity of the eclectic collection. These are places where I find myself on my
hands and knees looking at the bottoms of piles, hoping to find treasures that
are hidden as I am also trying to hang onto my glasses with my mouth because I
have old eyes. It is an adventure, an adventure that is gifted to me by me. It
is also an investment of time, one that I love investing in, but rarely commit
to because, you know, life.
I didn’t get to indulge myself too much this time, but I will next time
Three books $3.00, tag on $0.23 in taxes, about $1.20 on
parking; an investment of $4.50 for an hour and a half worth of my sojourn down the Rabbit Hole. It
was well worth the investment. Which is what I think every time I go to a used
bookstore.
