Old Books VS New Books

We all have our preferences when it comes to book buying. Whether you like to buy your books new and clean from a shop or you hunt for bargains in a charity shop or second hand store. We all have our own thoughts on how we like our books to look. Recently i have been acquiring books more and more from charity shops or second hand. Mainly because they are a lot cheaper to buy and it means i’m saving a little bit of money. This post is a bit of a chat about where we get our books and if it should matter if the spine is cracked or there are folds in the pages.

I started off my book-buying life solely buying books from charity shops. This was because i wasn’t sure of what i was really interested in yet and buying books cheap allowed me to read all kinds of genres and figure out what i was interested in without spending a lot of money. This worked out really well for me because i didn’t feel awful about throwing away an unread book that cost me 50p that i just wasn’t interested in anymore. If you’re just starting out reading or trying to get in to a new genre, i’d definitely recommend buying used books.

However, buying used books usually comes as a problem for most book lovers. Book damage. A lot of people who love books like their shelves to look clean and neat, this means that the books on the shelves have to be in pristine condition too. For so long i spent time buying books brand new and making sure i kept them looking completely new (why would you even bend that spine?!) but that changed recently.

I’ve found the joy in having a read well looking book. Obviously there are some books that you will always want to keep looking new, but more often than not i’m likely to crack the spine or dog ear the pages (only if needs be, i’m not an animal). A well used looking book shows signs of the words touching so many people. It shows that a lot of people have loved that book and have read that book and enjoyed everything it has to offer.

Occasionally i am one to splash out and spend some money in Foyles or Waterstones, there is nothing like going in to an established bookstore and picking out some fresh copies. But there is also a great joy in finding a rare or unexpected book in a second hand bookshop. If you are someone who rarely ventures in to these types of places, then i challenge you to see what you can find, because if you find something special, chances are you won’t really care what it looks like.