Open Season at Half Price Books
November 5, 2006: The first Half Price Books store I visited in Kansas City is in Olathe not far from where I worked at the Southlake Business park near 1-35 and 119th Street. The next store I found is in Overland Park near 93rd and Metcalf, another Sprint facility I worked at for several years. Sprint likes to move folks around.
I’m not sure which store opened first, or when they first opened. A few years ago, however, a Half Price Books opened in Westport, near our home in mid-town Kansas City, and it has become one of my favorite book haunts. The staff is friendly and fun in an eclectic mid-town way they pay well for trade-ins, the layout of the store is intelligent and inviting, and the book selection is marvelous.
Half Price sends coupons to customers on their mailing list a couple times a year. Four coupons are provided. The first coupon, good on a Monday or Tuesday, is for 40% off the price of one item. The second coupon, for Wednesday and Thursday, is 30% off,the next coupon, good Friday and Saturday, is 20% off, and for the grand finale, the penultimate coupon, good on Sunday, is 50% off.
The coupons can be used for any item in the store. The Westport Half Price has a first edition of William Faulkner’s A Light in August, an early state with the original glassine cover in very good condition, advertised at $9,000. This book is a little out of my price range, and I don’t collect Faulkner (thank goodness!), but a collector friend of mine asked about the volume and was told the 50% off coupon could be applied toward its purchase, reducing the price by $4,500. A pretty good savings...
The week prior to coupon week, I scout out potential trophies. It’s important to develop a list, because another buyer might pick one off before you get a shot. 
(Hunting metaphors seem appropriate in the fall.) This time out, though, my scouting didn’t yield much, so I was thrown back on instincts and intuition when the sale arrived.
I stopped first at the Half Price near 93rd and Metcalf on my lunch break. Forty-five fruitless minutes later I hadn’t found my 40% off book, though I did find a trade paperback edition of Robertson Davies’ cheerful collection of holiday ghost stories, High Spirits. The book was in serviceable but not pristine condition. I had been seeking a copy for a few weeks and was pleased to find it. At $2.98, however, it didn’t merit a coupon. Especially as I had the Westport store to visit on my way home.
Several cases of collectible books are positioned just right of the entrance at the Westport store. These include a locked display case where the likes of Faulkner first editions are displayed. When I entered the store around 5:45 in the evening, I found an older gentleman, dressed in a suit, perusing one of the bookcases. After looking over a boxed volume on an 18th Century botanist’s visit to the Americas, and deciding I could live with out it, I inquired whether he was looking for a 40% off book. With a smile, he replied that was precisely his mission.
I wandered around the store, checking my favorite categories, and after about 30 minutes decided on a trade paperback copy of Religion and the Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant by James M. Byrne, the Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at St. Mary’s University College in London according to information on the book. 
The Enlightenment is a period of particular interest for me, and I’ve been on the lookout for a good introduction/overview of the period and the intellectual issues encompassed by it. Byrne’s prose is lucid and succinct. Here’s a bit from his preface:
‘Enlightenment’ has been most famously summarized in Emmanuel Kant’s dictum that an age of enlightenment is one in which people have the courage to think for themselves, no matter who they are or what their status in life is: philosopher, worker, king or priest. To think for yourself meant to think for yourself in all things, including matters of religion. This suggestion would have been, and was, resisted by churchmen, theologians and probably most ordinary people of the time; Christian truth was not something which could be subject to critical investigation as if it were a work of art or simply another part of the world around us. It was eternal, unchanging and authoritative; everything was judged in its light — as Galileo had discovered — and that which was deemed to be in conflict with religious truth was rejected and condemned.
The book was priced at $7.98, so not a savings along the lines of A Light in August, but a fun find and a good value nonetheless. In addition to my coupon book, I picked up a copy of Great Thinkers A - Z edited by Julian Baggini & Jeremy Stangroom. It consists of capsule 2-4 page overviews of important figures in the history of Western philosophy. The cloth-bound book was being sold for the ridiculously low price of $2.98, I suppose due to its unfortunate jacket design. Baggini is one of my favorite writer/editors when it comes to philosophy. I chanced upon his book, A Very Short Introduction to Atheism, shortly after accepting atheism personally and still think it the very best single work available on the topic. Four or five of Baggini’s books have found their way into our collection, and I rarely pass a new title up when it presents itself.
Here is an interior image of the Westport Half Price, taken from the front left side of the store. Shown in this picture is the music and video area. The book trading counter is just past the left side of this image. The store extends back quite far, and is the largest of the three stores in the Kansas City metropolitan area. At the upper left side of this picture can be seen several windows with stained-glass ornaments, probably salvaged from a house in mid-town.
On Wednesday, the day after Halloween, I returned to the Westport Half Price store armed with my 30% coupon and renewed determination to save money. I started off in the “Books on Books” section, a modest two shelves, and immediately found Steven Leveen’s The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life. I had seen this book in Borders last year and liked it but hadn’t felt like buying it for whatever reason. At half price, and in nearly new condition I didn’t give it a second thought. The sub-title is “How to get more books in your life and more life from your books.” It’s a sort of self-help book for people who want to enjoy books to the fullest and includes friendly advice on topics from writing in the margins of your books to benefits of audio-books. At 123 pages it’s a slim volume, but I often prefer shorter books. They are more pleasant to carry and to hold while reading, and the authors have expended more effort to distil their thoughts to a higher concentration. Leveen’s book is illustrated with pleasing pen and ink illustrations and includes a healthy index.
As it sometimes happens when exploring a bookstore, I found a number of other appealing books on Wednesday. These included DK Publishing’s The Story of Philosophy by Bryan Magee, which I wanted as much as Leveen’s Little Guide. Elly and I are both fans of DK books, which feature attractive layouts, carefully selected graphics, and polished, concise text. 
The Magee book covers philosophy (really Western philosophy) from The Greeks to Wittgenstein and Popper in the 20th-Century. It’s divided into major sections including “The Greeks and Their World,” “Christianity and Philosophy,” “The Beginnings of Modern Science,” “The Great Rationalists,” etc. It covers fewer individual philosophers than the Baggini volume, but treats important figures in greater detail and provides more contextual/topical detail. Philosophy is a subject that interests me, but I’ve found primary texts by the likes of Kant and Hume tough sledding. Overviews and introductory guides provide valuable starting-points to understanding their ideas.
I had lunch recently with a good friend, Bruce Bradley, who is the special operations officer in charge of the History of Science collection at the Linda Hall Library (one of the premier collections of rare scientific books in the country). He invited a visiting researcher to join us, Lynn Holt, Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy and Religion Department Head from Mississippi State University. I started our conversation with a question for Lynn: philosophers are such interesting people to talk with, why do you think they write such dull books? This got a big laugh, of course. Then Lynn proceeded to explain that the reason in his opinion is academic training convinces philosophers they must apply rigorous logical justification for each step in their arguments. He seemed to suggest that this belief is suspect, but I’m not sure I understood his point completely and hesitate to paraphrase it here for fear of misrepresenting his position. At any rate, it was one of the most enjoyable lunches I’ve had in the past year.
But the question at Half-Price was whether to get the Leveen reading guide or the DK philosophy book? The philosophy book was more expensive, so I could save more money with the 30% off coupon on that. But I elected to go with the reading guide (probably because I saw it first), put the philosophy book back, and crossed my fingers hoping it would still be available on Friday when the 20% off coupon was good. The philosophy book was displayed well above eye level, on the top of the book case, which is probably why I missed it on Monday. Fortunately, the gambit paid off, the DK philosophy book was still there on Friday, so I scooped it up.
I went back to Half Price on Sunday, with the 50% off coupon burning a hole in my pocket. I was thinking about getting a copy of Clive Barker’s Coldheart Canyon. The Westport Half Price had a cloth-bound edition in pristine condition. It was even signed by the author. I have the book checked out from the library, and have been reading a little of it, but haven’t decided whether I like it well enough to own it, so I decided to pass that one up. I also saw a boxed cloth edition of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, which was a real bargain at 50% of ($25). But I recently read part of one of the Narnia books, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, I think, and wasn’t all that impressed so I passed that up too.
I finally decided on an Oxford World Classics edition of Casting the Runes and other Ghost Stories by M.R. James. The Oxford Classics are cloth bound, conveniently sized for reading, and have top quality paper and typography. It wasn’t and expensive book, only $6, but it seemed like a fun choice to conclude the Halloween week book hunt so I went with it.
At the end of the week, after five trips to Half Price Books, I had some fun books to show for my time and saved a modest amount of money. I generally drop by the Westport Half Price once a week on a Saturday or Sunday. I’ve learned over the years to make regular visits to used book stores I like. Nice books tend to sell quickly, so regular visits significantly increase the odds of finding something fun. Also, the shopping approach is different than for a new bookstore or shopping on-line. It’s more like a treasure-hunt. I might be looking for one or more (usually more) specific titles, but keep my eyes open for anything interesting. And if I come away empty-handed, I’ve still got plenty to read at home...