Bargain Bin Books:
Thrill of the Find
"What a difference there is between one who compiles a book from hearsay in the comfort of his home and one who has gone through the tribulation of travel."
Al-Maqdisi, The Best of Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions,10th century
"To read through a geography is dull business, but to travel through your geography is enlightening indeed."
Price Collier, The West in the East, 1911
HOW does one identify an incorrigible second-hand book browser? The tilt of the head is the first giveaway. The hunter will be scanning titles off the spine of books as well as surveying a beckoning horizon of shelves and tables of potential literary gems. These dual features stamp the inveterate bibliophile. Here is a bookworm who loves to travel and an antiquarian traveler - particularly interested in remnants of the past - who loves to read. In my persistent endeavor to locate literary loot, I have scanned bookshops across continents. In pursuit of the finer things - in my quest for second-hand books, intangible factors come to play such as emotion, passion, taste and even psychology. In the process, this traveling wordsmith has come across some temples to literature. These are some of my precious finds made over the past decade.
A meaningful crossover took place in the summer of 2004 in Toronto. With my heart set on a smart jacket, I then fell upon A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of Life Letters and History (2000) by Bernard Lewis in a second-hand bookstore on Yonge Street, the longest street in all of Canada. Armed with CA$30 in cash and no credit card backup, I was faced with a tough dilemma wearable jacket or a hard cover book with a beckoning jacket cover. Mulling over the crucial choice there was no scope for a comeback, since departure from Toronto was scheduled for early next morning.
One of life's turning points emerged as I opted for the book over the wearing apparel. Since I was working on a literary travelogue on the Middle East, the book blurb promise of 'a treasury of stories drawn not only from letters, diaries and histories, but also from unpublished archives and previously untranslated accounts' proved to be too much of a temptation to ignore. The blurb's elaboration: 'in a spirited reappraisal of Western views of the East and Eastern views of the West, Bernard Lewis gives us an overview of two thousand years of commerce, diplomacy, war and exploration' ultimately sealed the selection. To boot, the 470 page book authored by Bernard Lewis an authoritative historian and Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University was priced at CA$29.95 reduced from a hefty CA$53.50. Here I chose food for the mind over accessorizing the body. And I have lived not to regret this defining choice.
Such an uplifting choice also befell me the following summer once again in Toronto when I came across Zen and the Art of Travel by Eric Chaline (2000). This literary find was ironically sourced at a bookshop located in Eaton Square, the city's glitzy shopping mall that embodies capital consumer craving. Originally priced at CA$29.95, the knock down offer was for CA$9.99. Here is a low cost find that raises travel to a higher spiritual journey - that of self-discovery following paths of contemplation and inspiration. Beautifully put together, with pearls of wisdom ('The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is a great difference between the beholders' Ralph Waldo Emerson) and ('We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want' Tao te Ching) that grace great graphics and postcard photographs here is material that is soul for the heart and the head.
A tongue-in-cheek take on the classic age of nineteenth century travel writing is The Lost Art of Travel: A Handbook for the Modern Adventurer by Vic Darkwood (2006). A bargain book warehouse located between St. Lawrence Market (home to delectable bread and cheese and delicious delicatessens) and Union Station (the city's train central hub) in Toronto yielded this hilarious account of travel in yonder years by an indefatigable British traveler. Here I became privy to nuggets of information: the famous annual Tour de France cycling event was originally conceived in 1903 as a publicity stunt to sell copies of L'Auto newspaper and that the rickshaw first appeared in the late 1860s in Yokohama, Japan as jin-riki-shaw (a man-powered vehicle). With umpteen notes of advice sourced from old books for survival of the fittest only - one of the gems is: 'Never rub your eyes except with your elbows'.
(to Be Continued Next Week)
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