I just realized that I got ahead of myself in my last blog (see Snake on a Plane). Before I leave the Midwest (metaphorically, of course), I’d like to offer up an ode to used bookstores. Because of my job, I often forget what a luxury a book is. On days like today especially, as publishers bomb the Bookroom with package after package of big fall galleys, books seem to have it out for me. No joke: I’ve often dreamed of suffocating under a heap of health and medicine titles.

That sentiment seemed a lifetime away when I visited Huntington Books in Mandan, ND (sorry, they don’t have a web site). While munching on a maple cream from the candy shop a few doors down, I came across cherry hardbacks of Alex Haley’s Roots and a Flannery O’Conner short story collection, both with dust jackets in tact. My sister called my attention to a 1960s travel guide to New York City with dining advice that’s still relevant. These books did not symbolize “work,” but art. They’re human artifacts, infused with dirt, must, oil, and gratitude from their former owners. I like to think when I buy a used book, I’m promised a more intense reading experience, that whatever previous readers learned will be passed on to me through osmosis. The sad part is that not all books even make it to used bookstores—some are destined for landfills and return warehouses. The trick during this fall downpour is to convince myself that there are books worthy of second and third lives. And, of course, there are. Wait until you read our annual Editors’ Picks feature in the Sept. 1 issue.

While sitting sandwiched between strangers on a flight to my hometown last week, I couldn’t help but marvel at my ridiculousness. I’m a book review editor who hates to read books on planes. Long flights, short flights–it doesn’t matter. So anxious am I to arrive at my destination that I can’t involve myself in a good novel or work of nonfiction. Air travel and that kind of concentration seem incongruous, even dangerous. Why would I want to plunge into another world, only to be torn out of it by a rather surly stewardess’ voice and suffer whiplash? I like to dictate the length of my sittings, thank you very much.

My only refuge is in magazines. Give me a Vogue, an Allure, and a GQ, and I’m suitably happy–until I look down the aisle to spy an eight-year-old reading a five-hundred-pound Harry Potter installment. Or better yet, a 90-year-old woman reading the same book. “Something must be wrong with me,” I thought after I made my connection at Minneapolis. I was, I decided during my descent into Bismarck, ND, a kind of pervert (magazines being the equivalent of a motel with hourly rates). Apparently, I like to “check in” and “check out” of a narrative cheaply, lest it encroach on the thrill of my homecoming. That emotion takes precedence over anything a book would conjure. And if it made me slimy, I’d just have to deal with it. I’ve never pretended to be a “normal” reader.

Once I’m where I need to be, however, the story changes. I’m in the right frame of mind for reading. On my sister’s bookshelf one sweltering afternoon, I came across a hardback of Ann Rice’s Interview with a Vampire, complete with gold-foil dust jacket. A quick glance at the copyright page told me it was a first edition (!!), a feature that my sister had failed to notice when she bought it for 25 cents at a garage sale. Just then, I felt the old jolt–I had chemistry with this book–but family called, and you can’t shut family out, as the man reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections on my return flight would’ve told me.