Books valued
SOME USED bookstores are warm, well-lit showcases of softly worn books. Others are almost comically musty. In some the shelves and floors are overwhelmed with rows and piles of books -- several lifetimes' worth of reading. But no matter their condition, used bookstores inoculate their cities and towns against literary amnesia. And they, in turn, deserve protection.
What's chic about used bookstores is the sublime indifference to hot authors and titles. Step inside and there is no season of Tom Wolfe or Zadie Smith. There is, in a way, no now. Books from 1950 can stand beside books from 1980. A weathered dust jacket is a sign of prosperity, the mark of a book that has held up -- at least physically -- over time.
Antiquarian books and whimsical topics get generous attention. On its website, McIntyre and Moore, a Somerville store, says of the used books it buys, ''Essentially we look for uncommon titles in interesting subject areas, usually in fields in which it's very hard to be gainfully employed, but in which a lot of people would like to be so employed. A good area could be archeology, it could be blacksmithing or zoo keeping or fly fishing."
Shopping online is convenient. But it is the physical setting of the store, its look and personality, that offers a place to go to find the expected and unexpected.
Yet used bookstores are vulnerable, threatened by high rents, the popularity of buying online, and fluctuations in foot traffic.
''Nearly all of the secondhand bookstores in the vicinity of Harvard University are gone," an English professor writing under the pseudonym Thomas H. Benton complained in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The writer recalls relying on CliffsNotes and then enrolling in college and discovering McIntyre and Moore, Pangloss, and other used bookstores that were alive and well in Harvard Square.
''At first I was lured in by the discount racks next to their doors. Later I became enraptured by the volumes of serious books about which I knew almost nothing. It was as exciting and humbling as discovering an unknown continent."
The writer suggests that universities might offer rental subsidies to used book dealers. But protecting used bookstores is a job for everyone. Patrons should support beloved stores. Cities working with developers could ask: What conditions would attract a used bookstore?
Libraries, of course, link people to books. But used bookstores extend this reach, letting people own a piece of the vast world that exists in a volume's time-softened pages.
