Let’s be honest, Christmas shopping has already begun, or at least the tremors of it are creeping up through the ground.  If I have any sensible gift suggestions for the average Everyman, it’d be to visit two places: the flea market and the used bookstore.  I’m not talking about the antique flea market, the plush, iconic, gilt-edged, white-shoe flea market.  I’m talking about the one where you can find unopened VHS tapes, used clothing, and fresh vegetables sold out of the back of pickups.  Those kinds of flea markets yield the most interesting gifts, and if the recipient looks at you a little askance, all you have to do is say, “Hey, nobody else is going to get a 1978 battery-operated ashtray for Christmas.”

Also, the used bookstore.  Used books carry the pretense of having already been read by people older and wiser than you, and if you stumble on an old hardback of some Pulitzer prize-winning novel, awesome.  Its pages are falling out, but the recipient will be happy, and the gift will have the weight of history behind it.  Theodore Dalrymple hints at this sense in this essay on the used bookshop, referring to George Orwell’s similar essay, “Bookshop Memories.”

Second-hand bookshops the world over still tend to be inadequately heated places, Orwell says because the owners fear condensation in the windows, but also because profits are small and heating bills would be large. There is a peculiar chill, quite unlike any other, to be experienced between the stacks of second-hand bookshops.

We’ve all heard about the decline of the used bookstore and what it means for the decline of Western Civilization.  Used bookstores are great, but cheap used books on Amazon and its kin are just as nice, and usually cheaper.  But still, try it out.  Get your gifts at the flea market and the used bookshop.  Your shopping will be far more interesting – and more fun, and more affordable.