Used bookstores and randomness

Here is Byrne Hobart on used bookstores as useful, if dangerous, places for injecting randomness into one's reading life. I've been thinking about these questions and have taken the simpler path of just reading semi-randomly from huge, high-quality anthologies. A few notes about used bookstores specifically: They're often great places to get cheap versions of classics, often with choices in size, font, and layout. Byrne's worries about adverse selection just don't apply as sharply to classics: there are tons of copies floating around, especially if it's a syllabus-friendly work, and (alas) people just aren't reading them as much. (They should.) I always spend some time actually reading in the bookstore, even if it's just sentences or paragraphs here and there. That reading has variable value, but the value is rarely zero. If you want to be reading, a good simple strategy is just to go surround yourself with huge piles of books! An underrated aspect of the Kindle ecosystem is getting…