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My Favorite Place to Buy Books in Portland

If this blog were more popular, I wouldn’t give this one away. While there are many wonderful bookstores in Portland, my favorite place to buy books in Portland is not a bookstore at all, but rather the Goodwill on Grand St. The prices are relatively low ($3.50 for a used paperback is f—— ridiculous, but it’s still better than Powell’s), but most importantly, whatever employee organizes their books is a genius. The classics section is four shelves–you can browse through it all in fifteen minutes and get an incredible overview of English literature. They also seperate hardback fiction from paperbacks, so if you’re cheap like me you don’t have to see all those hardback titles that you don’t want to spring for. Their non-fiction organization is great, too. My brother Dave has an obsession with birds and he found a single shelf devoted to them, chock full of old prints.

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5 comments

By jamesbernardfrost – December 29, 2006

5 Responses

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  1. Anonymous says

    $3.50 per paperback. It’s hard to imagine a cheaper form of entertainment, especially when you consider it can take you weeks to finish a book.

    Art

    December 30, 2006, 3:16 pm
  2. bigdumbjim says

    True. And yet, in the not so distant past, when thrift stores were actually for poor people, you could get them for .50 cents.

    Your point, though, is well-taken. When you think about the human effort put into the making of a book. $3.50 is cheap. I guess perspective is everything.

    December 30, 2006, 7:57 pm
  3. Anonymous says

    I still find them for a quarter or fifty cents here or there. Funny, but I always read them when I get them for that cheap.

    Happy new year,

    Art

    December 31, 2006, 1:59 am
  4. Anonymous says

    Hmmmm. Thanks for the tip. The galling thing, of course, is that the hardworking author doesn’t see a penny of that $3.50. Knowing how hard writers work, I sometimes think that used resale of books should be outlawed, at least until the material is public domain.

    December 31, 2006, 8:33 pm
  5. Anonymous says

    It is galling, David. I’ve often wondered how used bookstores justify this.

    There’s one used bookstore here in Ashland that won’t buy back review copies because “The author was never paid for it.” A small victory, but it was nice to hear.

    The argument with used bookstores is, I guess, the author was *once* paid for it.

    December 31, 2006, 10:34 pm

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