Six months of sub-zero weather are almost upon us, and that can only mean one thing-it's time to go into hibernation. Trade the lake for a warm armchair and the margaritas for Irish cocoa, and get ready to pull out a heavy quilt and curl up with a decent book.
However, before you can hibernate, you need to store up for the winter, and for someone like me who has twenty books to read at once, there's only one place to go: the used book collection in the basement of The University Bookstore. I'm sure this will shock some people that I would choose a place that bi-annually takes an unfair amount of money from students when so many cheap bookstores are already in town.
It's simple-the bookstore's half-dozen tables and shelves of discounted books provide one of the best cross-sections of reading material on the entire campus. On one table, you can find Dave Eggers, Roald Dahl, Chuck Palahniuk and Art Spiegelman five feet apart, while the neighboring shelf has Jane Austen and H.P. Lovecraft right under Oscar Wilde. It's pointless to go looking for something in particular, as you'll get distracted within the first five minutes.
The University Bookstore is also one of the easiest places to pick up a book on the spur of the moment, especially if you're shopping for textbooks. Since you're going to be spending a couple hundred dollars in one sitting, there's no problem adding \The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"" to the top of the stack-it's only five bucks more, and you've got something fun to read. Not to mention, it gets the clerk wondering what class you've signed up for.
But where does this bizarre collection come from? According to Steve Scheibel, who handles the store's used-book purchases, the majority of titles come from college wholesalers who buy their stock from universities around the country. Once a college takes a book out of circulation, the wholesalers scoop it up, offering it to used bookstores in good condition and high quantity.
""It's amazing to stand out there and look at the breadth of subjects,"" Scheibel said-and The University Bookstore's collection is vast in terms of its geography and topic. Where else can you find a Woody Guthrie biography, perhaps from a New York liberal arts college, bordered by two hardcover erotica textbooks courtesy of the University of California?
The trend of used books in the basement, Scheibel said, began in 1987 following the death of Allen Ginsberg. Ordering used copies of his classic ""Howl,"" he was surprised to see how well they sold and started developing what he saw as a ""strong college backlist"" of authors students typically read during college.
That backlist has stayed relatively constant over the years -writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger and Philip K. Dick are always popular favorites??-but there's always some variety. Former best-sellers are available through the wholesalers, and old book collections are often sold to the store.
""Anybody who can't find something to read down here doesn't want to read,"" Scheibel said, and I have to agree with him. Putting this much literature in one place does nothing less than create a buffet line for bookworms, and by only charging half price (titles average $7 each) it makes the selection beg to be raided.
Unfortunately, the bookstore's table does its job too well for pack rats like myself: immediately after talking to Scheibel, I wandered over there and spent $35 on Oscar Acosta and William Burroughs. Maybe the warmth of an afternoon at home is more expensive than I thought.
If you would like to join Les for some hot cocoa and discuss Jack Kerouac while sitting in cozy armchairs, email him at lmchappell@wisc.edu.
