Saturday, November 16, 2013

The Paperback Exchange

The Paperback Exchange is a tiny store tucked away from the downtown area of Romeo. It is not on the main street, but on a back street by the police station. I trekked to the store twice. The first time, I arrived at the store just after it had closed for the day. It was quite inconvenient, I thought, that the store closed at three in the afternoon. But, I returned, braving the chilly weather and the long drive with my sister.


The store was not much bigger than the living room of my own house. It was super tiny. Opening the door, I was greeted with a burst of warmth and that familiar musty smell of old books. My eyes beheld books, books, and more books. Stacked on shelves, piled on the floor, strewn across table tops, there were books of all kinds everywhere. I found it difficult to browse, though. I was forced to move stacks around, sometimes only able to just peek at the titled spines. That experience wasn't particularly enjoyable, I felt like I missed out on seeing a lot of books. But, nevertheless, I was impressed with what I did find.



I found that a lot of the books were older. I don't mean from one hundred years ago, but classics from my childhood. There was an entire stack of Ann M. Martin's The Baby-Sitter's Club series, many of them wore their original covers. I also spotted some of the American Girl series as well as the Animal Ark series- both of which I loved when I was younger. Seeing those series was like taking a step back into the past, giving me that warm fuzzy feeling inside.


The rest of the stock at The Paperback Exchange was the usual romance and mystery genres, along with one of  the biggest science fiction sections I have seen yet. The store also has magazines, religious books (both fiction and non), and the usual strew of adult fiction. There were two large stacks of just author Jodi Picoult's novels. And I even spotted a few old copies Agatha Christie mystery novels.


The store had a bit of a Red Wing's theme to it, including posters on the wall where bookshelves were absent. The theme brought out a bit of personality among the shelves and shelves of books. Prices were fairly decent. Mostly books were under ten dollars, with the exclusion of special editions or newer novels.



The Nancy Drew books were a challenge to find. After having to sit down on the floor to look on a low shelf, I first found about few of the Nancy Drew Files. The Files series is from the '90s and is just another spin-off from the original series. It carried on through the early 2000s, with refurbished covers and was fairly successful. On the other end of the children's section, far  from the Nancy Drew Files, there were more Nancy Drew books. I found a few of the yellow spined books behind a huge stack of old Hardy Boys books. I had to move the stack to get a better look at them. I ended up with  an old copy of The Sign of the Twisted Candles, which was in pretty good shape. The others were both copies of The Secret of Shadow Ranch, a title that seems to pop up in every bookstore I have visited.


 The Paperback Exchange is a little bit of a drive for me, so I can't say if I will return or not. But, after I got over having to sift through messy piles, the store left me with a fairly good impression.

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