Here I am. Sleep-deprived and back from vacation. The Dramamine is still kicking and I’ve been reading a lot about a giant algae blob near Alaska. I’m no scientist, but when unidentifiable hairy things start floating in frigid waters, it might be time to start stockpiling non-perishables. I recommend Coconut milk. Does that perish?
But, I digress. What I really wanted to talk about was a used bookstore in Provincetown. Tim’s Used Books. That’s what it’s called. It’s off of a commercial street in the little city-center, and you have to walk over weathered planks and under some plant life to get there. The sign is yellow and faded, and the store itself is an old house with a small, but well-chosen collection.
I started going to this bookstore when I was pretty young. All my dad’s family lived in Boston and went to the Cape in the summer. We mooched off their vacations, and now that I’m old enough, I mooch off my parents’ vacations. And each year since I was a young bookworm, I stopped in this store and grabbed something for the beach.
I’ve been trying to remember what all I found there over the years. The Tin Drum sticks out as an ambitious choice (and reading it on the beach was a grind, but I made it. The horse head full of eels helped). I know I bought my dad a copy of Revolutionary Road before Leo and Kate reunited to water it down. There might have been a Murakami in there somewhere.
But more than any specific titles I found, I remember how nice it was to browse in that old house. Usually it was a rainy day. Wind coming through the open screens. A couple of bespectacled browsers in flip-flops. The register was and is on a card table, and the man behind it (Tim? I’ve never asked) is always reading something esoteric.
I don’t need to go off on a save-the-bookstores rant here, but it really seems like places like this are closing everyday. Tim’s is still there, though. And this year I found a great hardback edition of The Collected Stories of Carson McCullers. It’s a tough copy to find. But it was at Tim’s. Now it’s on my desk.
And so here’s my point: before this floating artic blob expands and takes over the oceans, and inevitably the world, you should hang out in a small bookstore and maybe even take something home.
