Rare and Used

"This is the most enjoyable book about bookselling I've read in ages. Rare and Used deftly portrays the singular personalities of used book shops in Oregon, but it would ring true for any part of the country. Daniel Dietz offers a clear-eyed and engaging look at the subculture of book scouts, the invisible network of people who supply used bookstores. This memoir begins as a story about a stepfather's life as a self-appointed scout and ends with a son's deeper understanding of the man who raised him, told through perceptive anecdotes about the many ways people devote themselves to books and literature. This is a book for anyone who loves bookstores and the unlikely people who keep them alive." —Scott Brown, owner of Downtown Brown Books and founder of Fine Books & Collections magazine

"If this book were a store, you could count on finding treasured books inside. If it were a guide to a career sweetly oblique from greed, you could learn the ropes for simple happiness. If it were the profile of a friendship with an eccentric book saint, you could savor the company of this winsome character. If it were a quest for one's own quirks and loyalties, you could interrogate your own. Happily, Rare and Used is all these things in one. It's a compelling read for lovers of bookstores, books, and the people who haunt them. Every story, every paragraph delivers timeless lore from the book trade, with impish affection. —Kim Stafford, author of As the Sky Begins to Change

"Daniel Dietz's narrative takes the reader through the winding stacks of used bookstores, church sales, and book fairs in the Pacific Northwest to share the buzzy highs and stomach-dropping lows of the book scout's ultimate quest: finding what you seek and eking out a living amidst it. Exploring the bonds of family, apprenticeship, and friendship, with homages to the complex and still under-examined works of Diane di Prima and Joanne Kyger, this story grapples with the constant flow of books in and out of the lives of those who love them." —Mary Catherine Kinniburgh, co-owner of Granary Books and author of Wild Intelligence: The Politics of Knowledge and Postwar American Poets' Libraries

"I had to keep looking over my shoulder while reading this book; I know the world of it so deeply I felt spied on. I too was raised between stacks of mildewing, hoarded, treasured countercultural books with penciled prices inside. I too island-hopped up and down I-5 between crusty used bookstores that might contain a newly unboxed Snyder, Kyger, di Prima, Sund, Han Shan, etc. I know the hunger. Also, like Daniel, I have aged into knowing the futility of trying to hold on to anything, that the visionary transcendence of the poem doesn't live in the paper it's printed on. He writes with such tenderness and humor about this very specific path, deeply attached to poems of nonattachment, clothing smeared with mustard. What actually matters? We keep seeking, each in our own insane way." —Phil Elverum, songwriter, musician, and producer