The smell of a used bookstore is distinct.

And just the thought of it sends a swirl of hearts around my head like a cartoon circle of tweeting birds.

Dust and clutter, yellowed pages and wizened storekeepers in outdated comfy clothes with an encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything.

Long draped windows of thick dark green velvet like medieval dress skirts frame a reading nook that has been long-filled with stacks of books and the currently used fur-carpeted sleeping hallow of the orange-striped guardian of the shelves. The ever-above-love-unless-you-are-worthy bookstore cat. Are you one of the chosen ones?

Bookshelves that reach like redwoods into the dark shadows of the high vaulted ceilings that have no end. So mysterious are the upper shelves they give a sense of weather clouds or shine at regular intervals depending on subject and flare contained within the side-packed pages around you.

Not a window in sight, but the red-dotted shelves with covers shielded by broad naked chests and edged in lace that guard delightfully unrealistic dilemmas of the heart seem to sparkle with a bright afternoon light mixed with starlight and faith.

Turn a corner and the light dims, with a swing sourced from unspecific shadows making it a concentrated effort to determine titles as your finger searches the novel spines of detectives with a penchant for the dark of big city streets and talking to themselves.

Wander the forest of bookshelf tree towers into a more colorful wooded area of rainbowed book spines flourished with swirl-tipped titles and gallant heroes. Did a shadow just pass over? Undulating over bookstacks on the worn tapestry of a rug, our arms reaching for book number countless in an everlasting series of adventure? A distant echo of a roar, like thunder after a lightning strike, bounces its deep sound waves and hair-raising might between floor and shelf, book and page.

There Be Dragons Here.

Bookshelf grain darkened by time and sanded with a millennia of book slides.

The rare and common, kissing covers like lost friends and reunited loved ones.

Smooshed and stacked, cocked and flopped, tilted and dusty, folded and torn. Worn until it lets loose the pages of war to scatter about by the incautious handling of the unwary reader.

In a true used bookstore you must always be wary.

Surprises lurk and linger, waiting for you. For good or ill, it is the way of the previously owned. The blessing of the reader past.

The magic of unwritten possibility.

Even before you reach the first page, the first sentence, the first word.

There, before you dive into the written possibly, you may cross the path of something great. Something unexpected. Something of questionable worth.

There across from its brethren – the copyright page – grasping each other in book eternity but for those brief flipping moments of a curious reader…the title page stands broad and explanatory.

Title. Author. Publisher.

Maybe a flourish.

Maybe a year.

A little logo that is often hard to decipher and rarely do we care about.

But on some rare occurrence brought forth by reasons only to be speculated upon, the title page had at some point in its existence – a period of time recorded always by his page brother – there could rest the after-market ink that could change the value of the book forever.

The author’s signature.

Yes! In a used bookstore anything is possible.

And many of said signatures have dove under the radar eye of the appraising bookstore owner. Kept its secret locked within its pages. Its treasure only to be revealed to you, dear reader.

You are the chosen.

Use this knowledge wisely.

For with great signature comes great responsibility.

Unless you don’t care.

So then just put it back and continue browsing.

…but let’s just go back to that signature for a moment.

If it has no value to you, as in you don’t really like the author, or care about their topic or the book doesn’t interest you...

Move along. Right?

Well, maybe.

Come visit me next week and I will tell you why, why, why you want to be aware of said signature. And how it could change your life…forever.

(Or are least ruin a really good snack!)

Ta-ta dear readers!!