by Jas Faulkner
When I was in college, there was a girl on my floor whose mother managed a Waldenbooks in her hometown. Whenever the mom visited, bearing a cache of food and supplies for her daughter, she would also bring two or three boxes of paperbacks that had been stripped of their front covers for everyone to dig through.
Being a thoughtful sort of person who understood what it was like to love books and have every bit of one’s disposable income go towards ugly, overproduced and underedited required texts; she made it as easy as possible for people to find books they would love. Every box was packed one layer thick with the spines facing up so there were no surprises. Sometimes the spines of the books were reinforced with clear packing tape. I figure it was busy work for slow times in an already neat as a pin store.
