I love this comparison! One of the great things about a used book is that it has had a life before it came to you. Someone bought it and read it; it spent time on someone else’s nightstand next to their bed or in their backpack. Maybe they read it on their couch or flew with it to another continent. It might have led a more interesting life than you have.

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”

– Virginia Woolf, author of two books I loved: Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway, along with many others