Then I found
Second-hand bookshops in the Essex Road,
Stacked high with powdery leather flaked and dry,
Gilt letters on red labels–Mason’s Works
(But volume II is missing), Young’s Night Thoughts,
Falconer’s Shipwreck and The Grave by Blair,
A row of Scott, for certain incomplete,
And always somewhere Barber’s Isle of Wight;
The antiquarian works that no one reads–
Church Bells of Nottingham, Baptismal Fonts
(‘Scarce, 2s. 6d., a few plates slightly foxed’).
Once on a stall in Farringdon Road I found
An atlas folio of great lithographs,
Views of Ionian Isles, flyleaf inscribed
By Edward Lear–and bought it for a bob.
Perhaps one day I’ll find a ‘first’ of Keats,
Wedged between Goldsmith and The Law of Torts;
Perhaps–but that was not the reason why
Untidy bookshops gave me such delight.
It was the smell of books, the plates in them,
Tooled leather, marbled paper, gilded edge,
The armorial book-plate of some country squire,
From whose tall library windows spread his park
On which this polished spine may once have looked,
From whose twin candlesticks may once have shone
Soft beans upon the spacious title-page.
Forgotten poets, parsons with a taste
For picturesque descriptions of a hill
Or ruin in the parish, pleased me much;
But steel engravings pleased me most of all–
Volumes of London views or Liverpool,
Or Edinburgh, ‘The Athens of the North’.
I read the prose descriptions, gazed and gazed
Deep in the plates, and heard again the roll
Of market-carts on cobbles, coach-doors slammed
Outside the posting inn; with couples walked
Toward the pillared entrance of the church
‘Lately erected from designs by Smirke’,
And sauntered in some newly planted square.
Outside the bookshop, treasure in my hands,
I scarcely saw the trams or heard the bus
Or noticed modern London: I was back
With George the Fourth, post-horns, street-cries and bells.
“More books,” my mother signed as I returned;
My father, handing to me half-a-crown,
Said, “If you must buy books, then buy the best.”

~John Betjeman

There’s nothing like a used bookshop, is there, friends?  The thrill of the hunt – the sense of possibility – the victorious feeling when you spot a treasure and snatch it off the shelf.  Amirite?  John Betjeman knows.

What’s your favorite used bookshop?  I love The Book Bank in Old Town, Alexandria – treasures heaped upon treasures.