Used Books Speak Volumes

A book in the hand is worth two in the Nook.

I take the old way, over the railroad tracks, into an old, blue-collar neighborhood that now serves as an example of how urban blight can also be suburban, and the road dumps me off at a left turn. On one side, a newish CVS; the other, a church. Take the left, and there is Magina Books, standing tall on the horizon.

It towers over the strip malls and newly built storefronts. The all-brick facade contrasts with the glass-dominated aesthetics of modern commercial architecture, most of them with “For Lease” signs up so long that the red lettering has been sun-faded to pink.

By the door, there’s a cheapo rack of 50-cent books. It’s always worth a look; I found John Irving there once and my life has never been the same. New titles meet you upon entering the shop, with their soft glossy covers, but it is the smell that you notice most of all.

The old books have a familiar musk, the same smell of a library when we were little. It’s the old books that lead you to Steve Magina, 58. (It’s pronounced “ma-JEEN-a.”) He’s almost always at the back of the shop, behind the desk, surrounded.

“Hi,” he calls from the far back. Sometimes you don’t see him. “Anything you are looking for in particular?”

“Catcher in the Rye?”

“You saw the new documentary on Salinger?”

“I did.”

“Everyone has been wanting to get their hands on this book.” Steve beelines for a shelf and pulls a new copy without looking for it.

Cataloging

George Magina, Steve’s father, had the store built in 1948 and originally ran it as curio shop. George was an avid reader and a great lover of books. As time went on, he weeded out the coffee cups and vases to make more room for the new and used copies.

George died in 1986 at age 78. It was already agreed that Steve would take over the family business. The father-and-son duo had been working together for some time.

Steve is tall—six foot three or four, depending on the shoes. His hair is salt and pepper and still full. He’s worn a goatee as long as I have known him. When he speaks, it’s in bursts, developing the conversation as collections of words with little silences in between.

He’s democratic with the way he runs the business. You come in for the first time and get the same service he’ll offer to his lifelong customers. Find your book, along with others by the same author. Then get a snippet of history about the book or the author. Steve has a lot to say about writers. Just ask. He’s got a lot of them in stock, too.

“You can find things now,” he says. “I had to do a lot of reorganizing.”

That’s online and off. Steve has 50,000 books in the store, but, like a lot of used booksellers, he sells via the Web too—about 20,000 of his volumes are posted on half a dozen Web sites. Still, if you’re coming in and know what you want, just ask Steve. He can find every book in his store without much effort. I’ve seen that unerring instinct every time that I have come in looking for something.

Saving grace

College was cleaning me out. After a series of very bad choices, I found myself paying for school and living with an out-of-work girlfriend.

The economy was tanking, and the student loans that had been keeping me afloat dried up. After paying for a semester out of pocket, there was nothing left for schoolbooks — not if I wanted to make rent.

It was luck that I saw Magina on my way to school one day. The advert on the side of the building looked promising, so I stopped in with my girlfriend the next afternoon. I had my list of reading materials; she had her addiction to shopping.

The grand total was thirty-some-odd dollars. It would have been less, but along with my college books, I was also buying a few other books that my girlfriend wanted, and a $15 leather-bound, gilt-edged copy of Edgar Guest’s The Passing Throng.

“It’s so pretty,” she said. “You have to buy it.”

And I did. And rent was late.

Rarities

The rare copies do not outnumber the others, but they are the centerpieces of Magina Books. Sometimes on display, other times hidden deep in the stacks, they make Steve’s store stand out from the rest of the shrinking bookstore economy in Michigan.

“I get people coming from all over [Michigan] looking for rare, leather-bound old books.”

“Is there anyone else in the area like your store?” I ask.

Steve shakes his head. “No.”

Rare book collecting — your Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio — is a rich man’s game. You won’t find it at Magina. But the collector’s market for semi-rare, or very pretty at least, is still alive.

“Online helps.” Steve says he put his business online back in 1997. “But I wouldn’t say that it has been a huge boost.” Steve looks to his front door. A father and son just walked out, their search for a few copies of used paperbacks completed. “Most of my business still comes through the door.”

Hard copies

I’ve heard Steve say it before. And as I am typing this up on a Royal typewriter, next to a bookshelf that is structurally compromised by the weight upon it, you know that I agree: there is nothing like a book in your hands. The world, it would seem, still tends to agree, even if it is leaning digital for most of its daily reading.

When Barnes & Noble debuted its line of B&N Classics, it advertised them as, “Handsome. Authoritative. Affordable.” Unlike modern books, which are mostly utilitarian in look, the Classics boast richly designed covers and gilding on every side of the page, evoking the look of Magina’s out-of-print and rare editions. If the second word in that ad means anything, certainly books have more power in hand than a Nook.

“They’re a great experience,” Steve tells me.

I still like to open and read my copies of Guest and Capote, both bought from Magina. I even bought my son a copy off the B&N line, Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. It’s not quite the same as an old book. The smell and crispness of the pages doesn’t match, but it’s close. It feels almost right.

Elliott Fitzgerald McCloud is a writer, poet, lyricist, alchemist, and partner in a timeshare on Hyrule. He earned his BA from Wayne State University in English. Since then he has worked and written in the fast food and medical industries.

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