Kathleen and I went to the Copperfield’s Used Bookstore in town yesterday. They offered cake and coffee; the cake had pictures of all three bookstore cats that have graced the store in its twenty years. Sally, the current bookstore cat, was a little distracted.
They also offered 25% off on the remaining stock.
Kathleen found some excellent books on California history, including a gem; a book written by the editor of Forbes Magazine, in 1923, about the business movers and shakers of California (including the founder of the Bank of Italy, better known as Bank of America). It will be fascinating to see what the pre-Depression perspective is.
I am not as discerning or disciplined as Kathleen, so my finds were more modest, but I made up for it in volume. For Spouse, I found a book about civil war soldiers called Hardtack and Coffee, by John Billings. For myself (research) I got an illustrated book on the history of Alcatraz, and a book on the ecology of the Pacific coast.
I picked up an anthology of modern Native American poetry, and No Rooms of Their Own; Women Writers of Early California, edited by Ida Rae Igli.
Some other finds:
- The Cloud Pavillion by Laura Joh Rowland
- Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
- The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (originally written in 1919)
- The Professor Challenger Adventures by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Cruel as the Grave by Sharon Penman
Kathleen found a set of booklets on local California native tribes. The entire set comprised 23 books, and they had about 17. I couldn’t afford all of them, and our local tribes — Pomo, Ohlone and Miwok — weren’t represented, but I picked up several including the ones on Yurok and Hoopa.
The space was two-thirds empty, and they had lots of customers. Most people weren’t coming in for cake. Comments included things like, “They’re closing the only store I come into town for.”