Bookshops
I currently have a large pile of unread books which is fast depleting. When Oxfam bookshop in Dundee was open I would be in weekly and regularly spent £10 on a Saturday. This closed and so my pile of “growing faster than I can read them” is slowly in reverse. One reason for this was the Thomas Paine book I read. So dense was it that I resorted to the Star Trek Next Generation pulpy 25p novels to balance it out.
Shortly before it closed there was a worrying trend of book prices rocketing. It became common to see hardbacks for more than the cost of a new paperback edition. Having the dedicated bookshop meant that all the other charity shops had lower quality books in and also started creeping their prices up.
There are a couple of charity shops on the Perth Road who regularly have decent stock in, but the ones in the town can be pretty dire. One Perth Road shop used to have a decent selection of political/academic books and is also where I got the amazing Michael Scott Rohan novels for 50p each. The last time I went in I was excited to see some newish Computing textbooks in, but they were £10-£15 each. Maybe they were bargaining on the rarity factor of having computer books that don’t boast “Office 97” on the cover and were making the most of them, but it was certainly more than I was going to pay for some second hand books they got for free.
The Wee Red Bookshop in Glasgow and Word Power in Edinburgh have me sorted for political stuff but I wish there was somewhere locally I could get both political/academic books and novels regularly and at decent prices. Can anyone recommend anywhere or do I have to resort to eBay (10p plus £80 postage) or amazon (10p, £0 postage and your soul)?