Wishing for an Online Second-Hand Bookstore: The REaD Hunter

“Get him!” Little Ja said to her cousins, and there was a mad dash toward the poor young man who said he’d buy carrot juice the next time he’d pass by, but he didn’t.

This was just one of the crazy things I did when I was a kid. My cousins and I sold carrot juice right outside our house, and we were all bent to earn not just a little, but a lot.

My mother always dreamed that I’d become a businesswoman, so early in life she encouraged me to sell stuff. If you’ve read Ja’s Childhood Businesses, you’d know that I had tons of businesses when I was just a kid. I would often sell something depending on what was trendy. When that trend ended, I’d abandon selling that and start selling the new trendy thing. Eventually I stopped because, even if I was earning, it was hard to run a business while I was studying.

Now I wish I had a book-selling business. It will be an online second hand bookstore called The REaD Hunter, and it will sell the most awesome books on the planet.

As a writer, I read books because I love reading and because I need to read great books so that I can become a great writer. Sometimes budget constraints stop me from buying a book. That’s when I discovered second-hand books. An old book is still a good book as long as you can read its contents. Sometimes it even has its own charm, as though it has its own history, or its own life.

If you patiently scavenge through a pile of old books, you can find a rare one that isn’t published anymore. You could also get lucky like my friend who discovered that the second-hand book she bought was signed by the author. She was overjoyed because she got it for such a cheap price.

The act of hunting for books also excites me no matter how wild those book-filled places may be. Going to the dusty second-hand bookstores in the sweaty holdupper-friendly streets of Manila doesn’t deter me. The lure of books is too strong for me to mind the dust, the heat, or the danger. Discovering unknown second-hand bookstores equally thrills me. It’s like discovering a secret garden, but instead of finding flowers, you’ll find stories that unfold into people, places, even worlds.

Mix that all together, and add that I’ve been reading Steve Jobs: A Biography by Walter Isaacson where Jobs says to Wozniak, “Even if we lose our money, we’ll have a company. For once in our lives, we’ll have a company,” what you get is me wishing I had a company too.

For more about books, check out these links:

• What do you love about second-hand books?
• The Books I Bought at the Floating Book Fair
• Sugar on a World: A Review of Mahdur Jaffrey’s Climbing the Mango Trees
• My Virtual Notebook: Writing Tips from Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark

Check out my other blog categories.

Age of the Diary by Jasmine T. Cruz. If you like this post, please subscribe to this blog. Follow Ja on Twitter: ageofthediary. Email Ja at: ageofthediary@gmail.com. 

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