They smell like permanent marker, but they're only a dollar.

Even better than an e-trip to Amazon.com's Used Books section is the trip I took today, in real life.

The used book sale at the public library here was amazing. It was my first trip to one. Do they have these in Toledo or my hometown? I don't know. Probably, but let me have this moment of discovery, OK?

If it weren't for the yellow signs outside and the ride from my friend, I wouldn't even have thought to head to the basement of the library.

Once inside, my chest did that over-excited heart/stomach flop thing, like when you're in third grade and waiting to use new playground equipment for the first time. I wanted to use EVERYTHING before anyone else, and I wanted to do it all at the same time. I couldn't scan the shelves fast enough.

It was like a garage sale, without the creepy toupee-holders shaped like styrofoam heads and the ugly blue dresses from 1987 that hang from a mishapen clothes hanger.

Enough analogies.

So, yes. It was good. So good in fact, that I had to leave some books behind, because I'd brought $5 as a way to enforce a limit on myself. I have no self control. If I'd had $10, I would've picked up books on rock collections. Because these books are so cheap, how can you NOT use all $10? Exactly.