Along the lines — but not nearly as interesting or universal — of Godwin’s Law (or, more recently, Moff’s Law), there has got to be an informal adage out there dictating that the larger and more inviting the booksale / used bookstore, the more likely it is that you will find absolutely nothing of interest.

I spent about an hour today carefully combing the shelves of a fairly large used bookstore on St-Denis which was going out of business, and had its still-sizable inventory on sale for 50% off or $1.  (This was a slow process, because browsing in French means that I have to tilt my head the wrong way, and the otherwise pleasingly uniform spine design of le Livre de Poche makes it substantially more difficult for me to quickly scan shelves of paperbacks.)  I’d actually consider myself a pretty discriminating book-buyer for texts in English — I’m an avid library-user, so I try to only purchase things that I’ll need to use or read again in the future, and tend to be picky about not buying generic editions of classics in the public domain — but I’m also trying to build up my little library of French books before we move back to the US.

“Surely,” I thought, “there’s got to be tons of stuff here that I want to read!” There sure is at the nearby Renaud-Bray.  But not really at the combed-over used bookstore, it turns out.  (Although I know you’re all totally jealous of my miniseries tie-in edition of Anne d’Avonlea.  Aww yeah!)  It’s very much the same phenomenon as the dollar-a-bag day at the end of a large multi-day booksale: even those of us who really love books can be shocked by just how many texts there are in the world that we have absolutely no desire to give a home to.

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