Now that everyone is poor, recessionistas have discovered something cheapskates have known about for a long time: libraries. Even Carrie Bradshaw saw fit to snuggle up with a library book between her $4,000 dollar sheets in Sex and the City: The Movie. However, libraries are only a good place to get books if you can manage to prevent the books from becoming lost/destroyed/covered in peanut butter while they are in your possession. What begins as a misplaced book can quickly escalate into the equivalent of a small BMW in library fines.
Fortunately, there is a better solution than shelling out $20 for a mass market paperback or feeling guilty about damaging public property: Books for America in Dupont Circle. For less than a cup of coffee, you can buy a slightly used book—and not just dusty copies of The Client, but books you might actually want to read. All of the titles are neatly organized by genre, and since the shop consists entirely of donations, there’s new stuff coming in all the time.
Once you find your book, feel free to take it into the bathtub, abandon it on the metro, or read it while you eat spaghetti—whatever! It’s yours. And unlike library fines, which fund boozy librarian poker nights in the stacks, the proceeds from your purchase at Books for America support the organization’s efforts to fight illiteracy among low-income families in the District. Rationalizing your spending by playing to your conscience—that’s what recession-time shopping is all about!
Books for America is located at 1417 22nd Street, N.W., near P St.
