On Mother’s day between brunch and the movie we stopped at a used bookstore. Whenever I enter a used bookstore I wonder why I rarely go to them. I love used bookstores. I love used books, especially well-read, jacket-less hardbacks. I love books that have writing in them — inscriptions, notes in margins, autographs. It’s not the bargain I love, I love holding a book that was owned, read and loved by someone else.

As I wandered through the fiction section at the back of the labyrinth-like bookstore, I picked up a few paperbacks I’d been meaning to read. After a while I realized I really didn’t want those books — I could pick them up at a library and if I loved them, buy them somewhere. I wasn’t really looking for anything special — maybe an H. E. Bates if they had one.

At the end of the fiction section is an unmarked room. It held the store’s only armchair and seemed to hold a mish-mash of genres. There were craft books and books about sex. There was also a long, tall self of children’s books. It was obvious the proprietors didn’t expect children to be looking at these books because they ascended far above my head — that and the sex books a few rows away. Directly in front of me as I scanned the titles on one of the children’s shelves was a small, worn-looking book that had slightly familiar type-set on the cover. I picked it up, opened it and was delighted to discover it was a book by James Whitcomb Riley. We own two other antique books by him – An Old Sweetheart of Mine and Farm-Rhymes. The book at the shop had an inscription:

To Grace E. Montgomery
Aug. 5 1899.

From C. F. Benedict

It also had a scrap of paper between the last page and back cover containing someone’s homework, done in pencil on notebook paper. It was in another language and looked very old.

Of course I picked this book up.

Two other books I found were a Larry Woiwode book I didn’t have and a book called The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor. I’d been meaning to pick this book up after I had a brief discussion with the author on Flork.

Clare found a very good copy of the Harry Potter book she lost and a copy of Froud’s Faeries.

Those books and one Dean picked up cost us less than $20 thanks to the 60% off everything in the store sale they are having. Great books for a good deal in Bethesda. Can you think of a better way to spend Mother’s day? I can’t.