You can always get what you want
In his Chronicle of Higher Education column Saving Secondhand Bookstores, Thomas H. Benton laments the replacement of secondhand bookstores with online vendors:
Paradoxically, that means I now buy fewer books because I don’t feel the need to buy in anticipation of future needs. I know I can almost always get exactly what I want online within 48 hours.
Previously, Benton noted that online library catalogs and databases similarly take away from the serendipity of browsing a library collection.
I don’t necessarily agree that electronic sources prohibit browsing. Serendipitous discovery is different in the electronic world, to be sure, but it does exist. And I certainly don’t want to advocate for decreased availability; there is something to being able to get the information you need when you need it, and I imagine Benton is grateful for it. But, were it not for a chance encounter in a secondhand bookstore, I would not be reading the book I’m enjoying immensely right now.
Several years ago, my husband and I happened across a copy of Dave Marsh’s Louie Louie in a bargain bin at a bookstore near Pittsburgh. Yes, that’s right, an entire book about the song “Louie Louie”. We He thought it sounded weird, too, so one of us he bought it (probably my husband, but I couldn’t say for sure). For the last several years, and through two or three household moves, I forgot about the book. Then, recently, I was looking for a book to read and stumbled across it on our bookshelves. If, at the time, we he had thought to ourselves himself, “This is interesting, but we can always get it from Amazon later,” I would not be privy to the sordid story of “Louie Louie” (which, by the way, is a tale of intrigue, copyright, and censorship—perfect reading for librarians).
[update] Paragraph above edited after consultation with my husband, who actually has a memory.
