The journey of a book

When I'm planning a trip, one of the first items on my to-do list is to find an independent bookstore nearby. And when it's time to pack, I make sure to leave space in my suitcase, strategically staying under the weight limit despite my tendency to overpack, and dedicate most of my souvenir money to bringing home a new stack of books.

My latest haul, from Symposium Books in Providence, Rhode Island, has been somewhat disappointing. I loved the book on punctuation I picked up at the ACES conference, go figure, but the stack I carefully selected during my bookstore wandering has so far yielded two 3-star books and one DNF ("did not finish," for those not fluent in book nerd lingo). Already, two of the eight I plan to take to a local used bookstore—in exchange for different books, of course.

This is my "I just spent too much money but simply had no choice" face.

Returning or exchanging any other purchase is an annoyance, but I don't mind it so much with books, even if I lose out on money. I make sure they find a good home elsewhere (unless I hate the book; then I make it suffer). I like to imagine one of my book finding its way to someone who will appreciate it. Even if it had to travel from Rhode Island to Utah to a yard sale to a bookstore in Colorado—there's something beautiful and serendipitous about all the exchanges that must happen to get a book to where it belongs.

It's one of the reasons I like to check out used bookstores occasionally, too. By taking home a book that used to belong to someone else, I'm adding a little bit of their history to my own library.

Take Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, for example. I bought this at Marissa's Books in Murray for $6. The former owner (male, I would guess based on the handwriting) had underlined passages throughout and left comments in the margins. For example, this passage on page 19 was underlined: "If you can't got first class, don't go at all." Next to this the reader wrote: "Reading this in first class STL–SLC. Ha!"

Now isn't that lovely? I have a clue as to where this book may have come from, and insight into the person who enjoyed it before I adopted it. Maybe he was traveling for work, or maybe he was a rich man who loves to cook (many of the recipes had markups, too). Maybe he was reading it for a school assignment, which is why so many of the philosophical passages are underlined.

This book wouldn't have meant as much to me without the personal insights the original owner added to its pages. Now it's one of my favorite books, purely because of the way it connected me to a stranger I'll never meet.

Any reader will compare books to friends at some point. Books go through quite the journey to find us, after all.