{"id":685,"date":"2006-09-26T14:23:10","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T14:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=685"},"modified":"2006-09-26T14:23:10","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T14:23:10","slug":"the_stinky_bookstore_and_my_la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/09\/26\/the_stinky_bookstore_and_my_la\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stinky Bookstore, and My Latest Aquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just spent my lunch hour browsing an intriguing little dive of a book shop called Utah Book and Magazine, better known among the bibliophiles at my place of employment as “the stinky bookstore around the corner.” The place is one of the last remaining examples in these parts of the sort of half-assed, stuffed-to-the-rafters, semi-amateur used-book emporiums that I loved to frequent in my younger days — most of my other college-era haunts have gone out of business or, in the case of Sam Weller’s<\/a>, have gentrified and cleaned themselves up in order to compete with the big national chain stores. But not Utah Book and Magazine, whose owner isn’t overly fussy about condition and will buy damn near anything. The shelves in this place are 12 feet high, creaking under the weight of everything from vintage pulps to well-thumbed nudie mags to last week’s best sellers, now running at reaminder-table prices. And you can get more than reading material at the stinky bookstore, too: you can buy an ice-cold beverage from a ’60-vintage Pepsi machine or a Big Hunk candy bar from a countertop display. Shove the candy bars to one side and you might find an antique straight razor, a Charlie McCarthy doll, or a dummy hand grenade for sale inside the counter’s display case. The only drawback to the place is, as you may have gathered, the peculiar funk that fills the air. It’s less like the scent of old paper (which I quite like) than the, ahem, strong aroma of some of the neighborhood bums.<\/p>\n

In any event, I can’t set foot in that hole without buying something, and today I picked up a novel with such an unlikely (and charmingly ungainly) title that I wanted to share:<\/p>\n

Adventures: Being a Stirring Chronicle of Intrigue, Romance, Danger, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Thrilling Triumphs over Fierce Beasts and Fiercer Men in the Mysterious and Exotic Dark Continent, as Recounted by the Daring, Resourceful, Handsome, and Modest Christian Gentleman Who Experienced Them<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, how I would’ve swooned at such a title when I was a boy…<\/p>\n

Incidentally, I’ve been adding to my LibraryThing catalog<\/a> whenever I’ve managed to find the time. I still have several banker’s boxes to go, but with the addition of today’s purchase from the stinky bookstore, I’m up to 919 titles…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just spent my lunch hour browsing an intriguing little dive of a book shop called Utah Book and Magazine, better known among the bibliophiles at my place of employment as “the stinky bookstore around the corner.” The place is one of the last remaining examples in these parts of the sort of half-assed, stuffed-to-the-rafters, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}