#SecondhandBookstores

What do you do on the first gorgeous Saturday of the year??  Go for a drive, get out of dodge and leave the housework for another day!

My husband and I ended up in Bragg Creek...yes, for ice cream and to poke around.  With ice cream in hand we stumbled upon an awesome little bookstore, filled with secondhand books.  The first thing I noticed was the smell....yes, I am sure some of you think I'm nuts, but there is a distinct smell of books that have owner history and have been "around the block" so as to speak.

What was most rewarding to me was seeing my husband on his knees sorting through some very, very old children's books that he remembered owning and sharing with his brother as a kid.  Black Beauty, Heidi, The Call of the Wild and several other wonderful titles.

This set of books were "two stories in one" and hardcover (gotta love those old hard covered books).  After looking at one cover page and flipping through the story, you could turn the book over and then flip it up and there would be another cover page and story - each story would meet in the middle! From a publishers standpoint, great idea and cost effective, from the buyer standpoint a great value...two books for the price of one!!

I loved watching my husband take a walk down memory lane, opening the books, flipping through the pages, remembering the titles and stories and actually recounting how he and his brother felt about these books and how much he and his brother loved them.  I asked him if he wanted to buy them...he thought for quite a long time but decided not to.

I realized that these bookstores are a wonderful trip down memory lane - by simply seeing and picking up a title of a book we owned and read can transport us back to a time in our life, flooding us with memories of family times, friendships, holidays we had taken and the books we read on a beach, people we shared these books with and the wonderful stories we never forgot. 

Thank goodness for these wonderful places and perhaps that's why so many of us actually keep certain books, it's because they are not just about the books but also about the memories, the moments, the people and the times in our life -  that simply by seeing the book, picking it up and flipping through it will take us back to that time and moment in our life.

As much as electronic books are our future and have a place....nothing will ever replace these bookstores and those wonderful books on our shelves - or as a friend of mine once said "spending time with an old friend".

www.inktreemarketing.com
www.publishacookbook.com