Don't Judge a Bookstore by its Cover

Based on two recent experiences, I'd say there's hope for used bookstores after all. And I've also re-learned the concept of not prejudging a bookstore by my initial impression of it. Yesterday, on a tip from my mom, we stopped by Kep's Paperback Exchange (61 N. Williams, in downtown Crystal Lake). At first I was disheartened at the sight of shelf after shelf of mass market paperbacks from the usuals--Steel, King, Crichton, etc. (Which in retrospect shouldn't have surprised me, since writers of that ilk sell about 98% of new books, so it stands to reason that they'd dominate used book stores as well.) But I finally found a section where the proprietors had segregated the literary fiction and higher-quality non-fiction. I was quite pleased to pick up a copy of There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz, a universally renowned book I've been wanting to read for quite some time.

About a month ago, we visited Book Market (1157 W. Jefferson in Joliet), a store Julie has been haunting since her teenaged years. As with Kep's, the rows upon rows of romance and science fiction novels discouraged me at first before I realized there was literary fiction mixed in with the more mainstream stuff. It wasn't as easy a browse as was Kep's but it was just as rewarding, as I found a cheap copy of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the great novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the Russian Gulag. I had read the book years before, sold my copy impetuously during one of my periodic eBay furies, and later wished I still owned it. Thus I was able to rectify a past error. Julie and Maddie also found good books for themselves, so it was a profitable visit all around.

Finding good books isn't always easy. You usually have to hack through a forest of dreck to find the stuff that's worth reading. Navigating a used bookstore is no exception.