ocschwar the unpronounced.

Over the last 20 years I spent many evenings at McIntyre & Moore's bookshop. There's just something about the stacks of used books in the carefully measured level of disorganization, that makes used books in general and M&M in particular a perfect place to unwind. And while I bought books there every once in a while, it was a fact that every visit there I would leave the store feeling sad that I could not buy all the titles I ogled there. There was the issue of time to read these books (as it stands right now if I don't figure out a good schedule for these things I will not be able to read what I have in my hosue right now, within my lifetime.) And the issue of space. And the issue of weight. But there was also the problem that while M&M had the best selection for good scholarly books, they were not priced to move. I could, and sometimes did, put my name in a bookmark, place it in a book in that store, and the bookmark would stay there for years. $30 dollars for a Springer Verlag book on physics. THat kind of thing.

A couple weeks ago I visited the new bookstore in Ball Square. It's a nice store, and the owner's a good guy. But the books, well, imagine an airport bookstore where the good books have all sold and not been replaced. And the ones that didn't sell never got remaindered. There was not a single title I could see there that I could find myself buying.

Don't it always seem to go..
That you don't know what you got till it's gone.