Goodwill

By Zary Fekete

The Library of Alexandria burned down in 48 BC, and 40000 scrolls were lost. In 1986, a fire in the Los Angeles library destroyed more than 1 million books. I wasn’t there for either of those events, but the pain of those losses must live loudly within my heart, because I take every opportunity to buy more books. When I was twelve years old I had a bookshelf in my bedroom, and one day, just to see if it was possible, I took every book off the shelf and used them to build a wall across my room that was over two feet high. I am fifty now and I have enough books to line the walls of my bedroom from floor to ceiling.

Like most booklovers, I have purchased my fair share of books from Amazon or eBay or Barnes and Noble, but my favorite book-buying experiences have been in used book shops. There is one particular book shop in my home state of Minnesota where five dollars will allow you to fill a paper bag with as many books as you can carry. When I see a garage-sale sign it is nearly impossible for me to not pull over to check out their book selection. These have all been delightful experiences, but, by far, my favorite book-buying habit is to browse the bookshelves at Goodwill.

Each Goodwill is laid out in a similar fashion, and I feel like the consummate insider when I push through the swinging doors and walk to the back-right corner where the book collection awaits. My anticipation builds every time as I weave my way through the used clothes racks and stacks of kids’ toys and board games on my way to the book corner. I can tell I’m getting closer when I start to smell the pages.

The employees at Goodwill sort through thousands of items each week, and that amount of work doesn’t allow most of their stores to have anything more than a cursory cataloging system when it comes to how the wares will be displayed. Books are not organized alphabetically at Goodwill stores but are instead shelved in three general sections: kids’ books, hard covers, and soft covers. 

I have a browsing method when I reach the bookshelves. I start with the soft cover books. This gives me the chance to find either novels or nonfiction titles which have already gone through their hardcover phase. The books are shelved by height or size. I walk up and down each aisle and slowly scan each shelf left to right, drop my eyes down a row, and then repeat back right to the left. Once I reach the bottom of a shelf, I move on to the next one. As I walk up and down each aisle, I pass my eyes over the authors and titles and wait to see what jumps out at me. It feels like a hunt. Sometimes I pull down a book based on its title. Sometimes the colors are enticing, and I look at it based on purely aesthetic appeal. It is, indeed, sometimes possible to judge a book by its cover.

I have discovered some of my favorite books by browsing in this way. It was in a Wayzata, Minnesota, Goodwill where I found Alexandra Fuller’s biography Please Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight which chronicles her experience as a third culture British kid growing up in Africa. In an Orlando, Florida, Goodwill I found a copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible which I read about after I found Fuller’s biography.It   gave me further insight to the experience of children growing up in post-colonial Africa. I was browsing in an Austin, Texas, Goodwill when I came across The Riverside Shakespeare, normally a pricey collection of the Bard’s complete works that also contains a replication of the First Folio. A new copy of The Riverside Shakespeare costs over $100. That Texas copy set me back $4. Once I arrived home, I started paging through Romeo and Juliet, and I found a $20 bill the previous owner had used as a bookmark. As the Bard wrote in The Merry Wives of Windsor, “If money go before, all ways do lie open.” Indeed.

Browsing through Goodwill’s book section provides an opportunity to catch a glimpse at the social fabric of the world surrounding each Goodwill and, indeed, every part of American society. There are a number of books that I always find at a Goodwill. For example, there are always at least three or four copies of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom or The Corrections. There are always a few copies of Wild At Heart by John Eldridge. Every Goodwill also has copies of Joyce Carol Oates’ We Were the Mulvaneys and Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone. I come across these repetitions often enough to make me wonder what sociological phenomenon might be at play here. Franzen’s books are likely so abundant because Oprah chose Freedom as one of her book-of-the-month picks (much to Franzen’s dismay, which can be clearly discovered through a quick google search). 

In addition to the excitement I feel when I find a new title, I am equally motivated when I find a favorite title I’ve already read. After many years of lamenting to myself, I finally decided “why not?”, and I have been rebuying personal favorites and putting them in their own dedicated section of my home library. They become an instant collection of Christmas gifts for friends who have not yet read them. A few titles which earned their right to be rebought, in my humble opinion, are Peter Hessler’s River Town (which chronicles the author’s experience of working as a Peace Corps volunteer in China) and Beyond the Beautiful Forevers by Catherine Boo which is Dickensian in its descriptions of slum-life in modern day India.

I very rarely bring any of my own books back to Goodwill. In fact, I have enough books now that my collection has become a sort of neighborhood lending library among my circle of friends. And, if a friend enjoys a book they borrowed from me, sometimes it’s easier to gift it to them permanently and to assume an upcoming trip to Goodwill will replenish that particular copy to my shelves.

I was once checking out of a Goodwill when the man in line ahead of me clutched at his chest and slumped to the floor. The Goodwill worker behind the cash register called 911 and a few of us gathered around the man and fanned him while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. As we waited another Goodwill worker ran to the book section and brought back a well-thumbed copy of the Bible and read from the Psalms. Later that night after I arrived home and thought about what had happened, I took down my own copy of the Bible from my shelf and reread what the Goodwill worker had quoted. Then I browsed a bit longer through the pages and found this quote, “Oh that my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book.” 

Find a Goodwill, friend. 

There they are.

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press in addition to two short story collections later in 2024. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete