RDP Friday! Books I've Been Given #writingprompt

Photo by Ánh Đặng

I have received many, many books over the course of my lifetime, but what I truly remember most was the time when my favorite grandfather, Lewis James Anderson, left me his "membership" to a used book store in Roy. This was in the late 1980's, and I use the term membership loosely. What it amounted to was bringing your used paperback books - all genres - and getting the credit for what the book was truly worth (price on the cover). The more books you donated, the more credits you received. He had a large account due to the amount of books he had already given the store! The store kept your name on file (an index card), with a running total and added and subtracted the amounts with a pencil and their initials. Once your name was on a card, the entire store of books was yours!

I could pick any book, have the cover price subtracted from my credits, and then pay a whopping .35 cents at the time, if my memory serves, to buy the book and take it home. 

I loved it! I would ride my bike to that store that was tucked in between a Woolworths and a fabric store. I perused the books from front to back, and spend many hours there, thumbing through pages and staring at covers until a book caught my eye. I went through a phase of reading all the horror books -- so scary, but couldn't get enough!  Then moved onto adventure and thriller. But when I found the Harlequin Romance section...boy, oh, boy, oh, boy...I stayed in that section for a very long time. 

I wasn't gifted A book, but a world of books from a great man, who I couldn't have loved more. 

Today's Ragtag Daily Prompt bought to us by Martha Kennedy

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