Monday, April 27, 2009

Walk #116: Used Bookstore to Used Bookstore...



I went to Paradise today; had to get my car smogged. While waiting the hour for the car to be seen by the technician, I walked up Skyline Boulevard. Paradise essentially has two streets that are the main drags. There is no clearly defined "downtown", just two streets a few miles long, lined with thrift shops, realty offices, fast food joints (ugh!), mom and pop diners (yeah!), doctors offices, multiple flavors and varieties of churches, private churchey schools and the occasional taxidermist.

Paradise sits on top of a butte. Go further up the butte and you reach Magalia. These two towns host a population of about 40,000 people. All of them poop into a septic system. The largest urban population in the United States without a sewage treatment plant.

There are no bookstores within these two towns. My goal was to check out two used bookshops I'd seen while exploring the town.

The first bookshop was quite good. This must be where the towns educated folks bring their books to be sold. I found a nice J.D. Crossan book on Jesus (hardcover--see the book above) for two bucks. The proprietor was knowledgeable and helpful (even though his front teeth were missing).

I walked on.

The second bookshop, a mile or so up the road, was filled with mostly mass market paperbacks by the usual mass market writers. A huge Romance section. But not much else. I didn't buy anything there...

No comments: