One Dollar Book Store

Over the weekend, I explored the One Dollar Bookstore in Orange with my mother-in-law (aka Nana). She's a pretty voracious reader and I love going to book stores, though I'm drawn more to non-fiction and reference books. She heard some good buzz about this store where each book, whether hardback or softcover, bestseller or not, was one dollar each. It turns out a lot of Yelp reviewers were accurate in describing it like an abandoned grocery store filled with bookcases:

It was a bit overwhelming. I don't know if you can make out the sign that says "Mixed Books" over these shelves, but that says it all:

A lot of reviewers complained that a lot of the books were old (guide to Word 2.0, anyone?) and that you really have to dig around. Again, pretty accurate. Though there were some attempts at having sections, like a brief Computer section and Children's area, for the most part everything was "Mixed Books".

This was one of the better groupings as this was all fiction in the last decade (for the most part):

But going through the rest of the shelves was kind of a mental challenge. As my eye scanned the spines, the titles would jump from "The Lovely Bones" to "Introducing Microwave Cookery" to "Funk and Wagnall's Encyclopedia Volume 24" to "This is the Cocker Spaniel" right after each other. One book was titled "Come Out Fighting". Was this a book on the history of say, boxing? Or a professional fighter's biography? A witty novel? Or an exercise book? Turns out it was a book about coming out as a gay/lesbian.

In the end, I scored a couple of old crafting books as well as this retro school book (I'm totally drawn to these illustrations):

Overall, Nana and I were glad to have fed our curiosity but we're not dying to go back. Our favorite used book store right now is Bookman in Orange--the books cost more but they are really well organized. After the trip to this place, we appreciate that even more.