FOUND: Adorable note

As stated in previous posts, we find a lot of great stuff in the books we buy back from the community. Though they range from frightening to downright hilarious, this is definitely the cutest, sweetest thing I've ever seen:

Cool books we'll never sell

Our used book buyers mostly see the same thing day in and day out: once-popular fiction, the Shipping News, old travel guides, the Road Less Traveled, and so on. We buy hundreds of books each day with confidence that they'll sell, but on some books we take a chance and hope for the best. Sure, we get excited sometimes, like when a great batch of quality cookbooks arrives, or when someone brings us all of Haruki Murakami's books in good condition. Still, used book buying is usually more rote than seat-of-your-pants kind of work.

But there's an interesting type of used book we see on occasion: cool books we'll never sell.

I got one today: After Dinner Science by Kenneth Swezey (circa 1950). The book has no dust-jacket, no blurbs; it' s not being reviewed on the radio or being pushed by Oprah; it's a "science" book, but the casual browser will never pluck this worn spine off the shelves. You can see what they're missing.

(If you can't read the copy, click to enlarge; the photo above is from the experiment entitled "Boil Your Coffee with Ice," and the photo at right is entitled "Sympathetic Milk Bottles.")

These books come in sometimes, and we have nowhere to put them: we don't see enough of them to merit a section, but they would get lost in the stacks. Mostly they kick around the counter until enough staffers have had a chortle, then they go out to the bins or the free box.

A few month's ago, there was a great book from the 1960s on professional rat catchers. And Le Petomane comes in from time to time. And there was the final Might magazine we stumbled on a while back. Want the Might magazine or After Dinner Science? First one to email me (pete at greenapplebooks DOT com) can have either or both; free if you can pick them up, $5 to ship. Really, we just want to match books to people who will love them.

MISSED CONNECTION:
Oh, and there's another Green Apple "Missed Connection" on Craigslist that works too well with today's Science theme to ignore. Is it physics or chemistry?

The Final Issue of Might Magazine

As Kevin posted a few days ago, we find some interesting things in used books and the boxes and bags they arrive in. Sometimes we know they're interesting but don't get them right out on the sales floor, often because there are suddenly 13 more bags and boxes to comb through.

I stumbled yesterday on such a find: the final issue of Might magazine. Do you remember Might? It was Dave Eggers' magazine in the early 1990s. Wikipedia describes it succinctly: "the magazine might be summarized as an effort by twentysomethings to say something instead of nothing." A worthy goal, eh?

It has much of the same quirkiness folks expect from McSweeney's, its more literary successor, like a wacky table of contents, lots of fine print, a tongue firmly in cheek but with compelling stories of journalistic or literary import.

It was a bit sad to stumble anew upon such good, quirky old-fashioned journalism from the post-zine, pre-Internet era, especially in these times of closing bookstores, online-only magazines, bankrupt newspapers, etc. But it was mostly just some interesting reading, like the cover story. Here's a pull quote from "Are Black People Cooler Than White People?" (the subtitle is "Dumb Question"):

The secret weapon of cool has been the eye open to synthesis. Just about every important black cultural invention of this century has been about synthesizing qualities or elements previously considered antithetical. MLK did it with Eastern thought and civil rights. Chuck Berry brought blues and country music together. --Donnell Alexander, Might#16, July/August, 1997

If you want this copy of the last issue of Might, the first one to email me can have it. Unless I have to mail it. Then it's $10. It pays to live near Green Apple.