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One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

(www.worldofinteriors.com)
153 points diaphanous | 2 comments | 01 Sep 25 17:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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rramadass ◴[02 Sep 25 06:24 UTC] No.45099723[source]▶
Man, this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I just love books, have a large collection of my own (though obviously not on the scale of the article) and am always on the lookout for offbeat books (old/new/whatever) on any subjects that i find interesting. With Internet Archives/Project Gutenberg/etc. you can of course have your ebook versions but there is nothing like having a hard copy in hand.

The right book at the right time can often be transformative opening up your mind to new ideas/possibilities and leading to better knowledge and wisdom.

For example; reading Bergen Evans' The Natural History of Nonsense (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.77094) from 1946, one of the earliest books on skepticism w.r.t. people's irrational beliefs/thinking/behaviour teaches you the importance of critical thinking for yourself which is arguably even more important today. A good review from Goodreads here - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2099042654

Another good collection are the excellent science/mathematics books from the erstwhile USSR many of which are now available at https://mirtitles.org/ A subset of those titles are available in hard copy form from low cost publishers on Amazon India. Checkout for example B.N.Ivanov's Fundamentals of Physics (https://mirtitles.org/2018/04/21/fundamentals-of-physics-iva...) and Roman Podolny's Something Called Nothing: Physical Vacuum: What Is It? (https://mirtitles.org/2013/11/24/something-called-nothing-po...) both of which are interesting takes on aspects of Physics.

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petercooper ◴[02 Sep 25 11:02 UTC] No.45101390[source]▶
The right book at the right time can often be transformative opening up your mind to new ideas/possibilities and leading to better knowledge and wisdom.

I agree. I'm a bit of a used book shop dweller and collector of oddities myself and I'm often struck with this sort of inspired feeling after reading the most random old thing that might otherwise have ended up being recycled. There's so much human experience packed into old books that simply isn't available online at all. Kudos to anyone who makes a serious effort to collect and archive even a slither of it (not me - anything I have will end up in the trash when I die).

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ghaff ◴[02 Sep 25 11:27 UTC] No.45101612[source]▶
There used to be a great used book store in Harvard Square but I suspect they sort of overextended (opened second location) at the wrong time though don't really know the story. There's another basically hybrid store--used books are in the basement--but I have to admit I haven't been in there for a while.

That area used to be a cornucopia of book stores generally but that's mostly gone.

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1. petercooper ◴[02 Sep 25 13:37 UTC] No.45102944[source]▶
I think they're a little more common where I live in the UK, at least. I actually thought the original post was going to be about https://www.the-bookshop.com/ in Scotland where I've visited a few times, but they have 100,000 books versus this guy's 150k :)

I don't know if the US has the concept of "book towns" but there's quite a few over Europe where you'll have used book stores very close to each other and some sort of annual book festival. Wigtown in Scotland is absolutely tiny (under a thousand people and far from any major towns) but has several, as does Hay-on-Wye in Wales. It becomes a bit of a tourist thing.

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2. ghaff ◴[02 Sep 25 20:27 UTC] No.45108558[source]▶
I don't think so. As I said, Harvard Square used to have a pretty high density of book and music stores. Not really so much any longer and I've never seen the equivalent elsewhere. Of course, Manhattan has a lot but, given the population density, I'm not sure I'd call it a book town.