HeavenShallBurn
First Post
No I won't tell you where it is. Unless you ask really nicely maybe, and even then it's a toss-up. Because if too many people start frequenting the place it could lose what makes it so great. And I found it by accident looking for a place to eat that wasn't a fast-food joint. I'd thought the bookstore described by some of my friends was in a different city. How wrong I was.
I recently found the bookstore that every bibliophile wishes they could find. The creaking rusted old cast-iron front store building tucked away behind main street where you get the feeling if you just looked hard enough you could find something extraordinary, maybe even magical. Beyond the burnt down bar and the renovation that blocks road access so you have to walk. Past the first floor where new books are sold up a set of twisted creaking steps to an old and precarious second floor. Covered in dust and smelling of aging paper, the open space is completely filled with old books. In bookcases and boxes, and stacks wherever a flat surface may be found.
My first trip there I found books I never would have imagined seeing outside a museum or private collection. A civil engineering book from the 1860s, a guide to fur trapping from the 1870s, history books from before the turn of the last century. One of my friends found a family bible from the 1780s there in a box from an estate auction 70 years ago and another located a biography of George Washington written before the Civil War.
I bought two histories of Eastern Europe written before WW1, a British treatise on WW1 written during the early 20s and a partial collection of Gibbon's Decline & Fall of Rome from the 1890s. All for just under $30US.
I recently found the bookstore that every bibliophile wishes they could find. The creaking rusted old cast-iron front store building tucked away behind main street where you get the feeling if you just looked hard enough you could find something extraordinary, maybe even magical. Beyond the burnt down bar and the renovation that blocks road access so you have to walk. Past the first floor where new books are sold up a set of twisted creaking steps to an old and precarious second floor. Covered in dust and smelling of aging paper, the open space is completely filled with old books. In bookcases and boxes, and stacks wherever a flat surface may be found.
My first trip there I found books I never would have imagined seeing outside a museum or private collection. A civil engineering book from the 1860s, a guide to fur trapping from the 1870s, history books from before the turn of the last century. One of my friends found a family bible from the 1780s there in a box from an estate auction 70 years ago and another located a biography of George Washington written before the Civil War.
I bought two histories of Eastern Europe written before WW1, a British treatise on WW1 written during the early 20s and a partial collection of Gibbon's Decline & Fall of Rome from the 1890s. All for just under $30US.
