I recently went to the Newburyport Library annual book sale. Two dollars for hardcover and one dollar for paperback – not as good a deal as the Amesbury Library used book shop that’s open year-round, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Browsing through used books was an interesting experience. Dozens of cardboard boxes full of books sit in a room in the rear of the library, and you have to shift boxes from one pile to another to dig for the really good stuff. Attending a used book sale is somewhat like being an archaeologist of publishing history – one box was full of old Cold Mountain hardcovers, not that the Cold Mountain promotion has come and gone and everyone has read the book.

I have so many books on my “to read” list that I wasn’t looking for more, but I was looking to fill my book collection with books I wanted to have, or search for good deals. Unfortunately the quality of used books isn’t always that good, which seems strange to me since i always keep books in relatively good condition.

Selecting a book to purchase gave me some insight into what I look for in a book. My mental checklist for books goes like this:

1. Is it paperback? Hardcover and large books are unwieldy, and take up too much space on a shelf. A beautiful hardcover with gold embossed titles is one thing, but most hardcovers are designed pretty cheap as a way for publishers to make more money before the paperbacks come out.
2. Is the spine broken or cracking? Too many were.
3. If it’s a paperback with a good spine, I pick it out of the box. Is the cover worn? There were at least a dozen copies of The Lovely Bones by Alice Seibold, but all of them had marks on their covers.
4. If the cover’s okay, I flip through it. Is there writing or highlights on the inside? I almost never write in a book – I did a bit in college, but only on books I knew I was going to keep forever (like The Moviegoer) by Walker Percy) but like to keep books in pristine condition otherwise. Notes and highlights only take away from the words on the page. If there’s something worth remembering I may dog-ear the page, but even then I’d prefer to just remember the passage and find it later if necessary. Besides, with Amazon’s search inside feature, I only need a few words from memory to find the correct passage.
5. So the book’s in pristine condition. Have I read it? If not, I may actually not get it right now – I do want to read The Lovely Bones someday, but I have more than enough books to read till a pristine copy comes along.
6. If I have read it, do I own it? I may have read it from a library, and want to add it to my collection. I did find Louise Erdich’s Tracks and The Master Butcher’s Singing Club (both of which I read from the library), in addition to a sequel to Tracks called The Bingo Palace. However, all were hardbacks, and the cover to Tracks was oddly compressed so that the book looked like a parallelogram when you looked at its top.
7. If it’s a paperback with a good spine, no writing or highlights, that I want to get, it goes in the bag. And from there to the front desk, where I bought it.

I bought only 6 books that day:

• James Joyce’s Ulysses: A study by Stuart Gilbert – not the classic text, but n explanation. I started Ulysses when it was named as the #1 book in English literature, but gave up when it became too inscrutable. I’m hoping reading the commentary first will give me an entry into the work, just to figure out what the heck is going on.
• Solaris by Stanislaw Lem – Sci-fi book adapted for an underrated movie with George Clooney. Scanning two pages of the cover I could tell it was good science fiction: “Eight times I heard the hum of the electric motors which turned the screws, followed by the hiss of the shock-absorbers.”
• The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester – A popular book a few years back, and one I wanted to read and add to my collection.
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - This is one of the few books I bought based on its cover – the skinned calf’s head cover in Barnes & Noble caught my eye. This one actually has a different cover, but the story sounds interesting all the same.
• C.S. Lewis – Surprised by Joy – Hadn’t heard of this, but I’m interested to read Lewis’ account of his intellectual conversion to Christianity.
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby – a nice pop culture break from the more serious or challenging reads I have lined up. Sort of a palate cleanser for my reading habits. Not that the book won’t be thought-provoking, but it’ll probably be more entertaining than a study of Ulysses.

Overall a good selection for this year. At this point I need to finish off a few books before buying new ones – The Gold Bug Variations is my current “official” read, with some Best American Short Stories to break it up.

All in all I’d recommend the Newburyport book sale to other bibliophiles.  If you’re in the area, I’d keep checking their web site to see when the next one will be.