Is there a romantic view of finding books or is it just drudgery or maybe a bit of both. A typical day can see me cycling thirty miles going into book shops , houses and charity shops. When the sun is shining and I just go where i feel like it can be the perfect day but of course there is always the opposite, always.
I have cycled in the pouring rain and freezing cold and come back with nothing to show for it and not even a book that might cover my expenses. Of course on a good day all that is forgotten and it can feel blissful to find a book for a couple of pounds that is potentially worth thousands. That might seem like a huge profit margin but not when you consider the cycling, other transport costs, expenses, food and other general life bills.
The kind of days when you find a very valuable book don't come around that often but they are the days that remain at the forefront of memory and somehow they happen often enough to be like a carrot dangled in front of a donkey or a win for a gambler. Not enough to make you rich but maybe enough to make it feel worthwhile against all those cold dark winter days when you have spent money and earned nothing back.
I recall being in Leatherhead on a December afternoon just as the shops were about to shut and it was particularly dark and cold. I walked into a junk shop and saw some old paperbacks for one pound each. There didn't seem to be much of value and then there it was a Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone paperback, Bloomsbury first edition in virtually perfect condition.
I didn't know much in those days about Harry Potter and thought it might sell for a few hundred. I rang a dealer friend of mine and he instantly took it off my hands for a thousand pounds and he sold it again within weeks for double that!
Looking back if I hadn't thought about it and I was asked about a good day in my mind i conjured up a beautiful spring morning day when I found the Harry Potter, barely stepped out of my house, just had breakfast at a lovely patisserie when I happened on a bookshop and found in an instant a book of great value but the truth was I had travelled miles and it was freezing. I was tired almost certainly hungry and had miles to go before reaching the warmth of home. In my mind i re-shape that day into something else that pushes me out of the house to seek new finds in my quest for books so that I almost no longer know the difference between fiction and non-fiction, somehow believing against the odds that everyday is a sunny one.
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