I love a good used book store. It probably goes back to my childhood: Mom and I clocked a few hundred hours in The Book Swap (across from Richland Plaza shopping center, but now long gone, so long gone in fact that the place where it used to be just looks like a vacant lot) when I was young, and we’ve continued regular visits to bookstores ever since, pretty much every time we get together.
About six months after she moved up to Arkansas, she started talking up the Dickson Street Bookshop. I’d been hoping to go, but this was the first chance we had to visit. And not only Dickson Street, but we also popped into the Friends of the Fayetteville Public Library’s bookstore and Once Upon a Time‘s physical store… apparently, it used to be inside their warehouse, but they recently moved to a standalone building down the road: I’m sorry I missed that! Anyway, on to the pictures…
Dickson Street Bookshop is a crazy warren of rooms with high shelves, just brimming with books. They’re heavy on history, biography, and Christianity, but I did, by the will of God alone, manage to pull an early edition of The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali out of there. From the library bookstore, I picked up a copy of Paul Theroux’s Hotel Honolulu (I read it in 3 days: not great, not awful, and it was pleasant to relax and read some fiction). And I grabbed Rodale’s Garden Answers: Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs: At-A-Glance Solutions for Every Gardening Problem from a lonely shopping/stock cart for my darling adorable wife.
I looked hard for photobooks of interest at every one, but didn’t find any on my list or that tickled my fancy. I did buy a few books, but at maybe a grand total of $10, I didn’t do much to support the local economy, though lately I’ve left bookstores without buying anything at all, so $7, $1, and $2 is something at least.
I really need to make more time to read.
