Half Price Books

Categories of Book Consumers: 1. If you want new books and a latte, you have Barnes and Nobles or Borders in Big Box/Strip malls. 2. If you prefer to shop on-line, you have Amazon. 3. If you don’t need brand new books, 4. like to bargain shop, 5. aren’t into books at all (so they have to be cheap and right in front of you to buy them) 6. or you are really into books (and you like to buy almost everything on the shelf but can’t afford it), then there is Half Priced Books. This place reminds me of long gone college days around Berkeley, where you are on a poor student’s budget, but need books, and you look for a deal, preferably a good used book. In those days there were 2 types of student used book buyers: A. Wanted the cleanest, most unused used book at a fair price B. Wanted the cheapest, and preferred pre-yellow-highlighted books so they knew what to study, and could always use pink or blue highlighter over the yellow for their own study notes (There was a C category, but that was bumming the book off a buddy who had already taken the course!) Half Priced Books’ inventory fits into the A category, but the prices are more B category. (I fit into the #5 and C categories, I think!) And on the other side of the buy/sell equation, if you also have no affinity to your old books, seeing that they have served their purpose and can be converted into something more useful, umm…like cash… you can sell your books here and cash out (but the books have to be in a condition to appeal to the “A” type buyer above, and fit HPB’s inventory/selling needs. Books are a funny thing, the way most people hold on to their books and move them from place to place, something like art or jewelry except they are rarely used after the first time, to indicate to themselves and others their taste, intelligence, interests, be it narrow or broad. I got a small journal book to doodle and capture ideas or sketch and a book of piano chords (both new) and a nearly new paperback by Haruki Murakami. What was fascinating was that in the back, where you sell your used books back to the store, I asked if they had any Murakami in the store. The clerk turned around amidst huge stacks of used books yet to be shelved, pulled something out from the middle of one stack, turned back to me in a swift dance like move, and handed me 2 by Murakami. I bought one for $5.98 Do you get that at Borders, Barnes, Amazon, or your local college textbook store? I think not! Which type of book consumer are you?”},{“value”:”Half Price Books Todos Santos Plaza – Concord, California – Buy and sell new and used books, CDs, LPs, DVDs, comic books, textbooks, magazines, electronics, games, nostalgia, stationery and more!”}]