Tuesday, June 13, 2023

At Bargain Books, Richmond

At Bargain Books, Richmond
I've made a couple of trips now to Bargain Books, a used book shop located at 7228 Hull Street Rd. in western Richmond. 

Located in a shopping plaza, off of Wayside Drive, this is a big store, with long aisles of shelving.

Prices are reasonable:
The store does accept trade-ins for store credit, but the trade-in value is quite low (as compared to, say, McKay's Books in Manassas, Virginia).

Bargain Books has dedicated shelving for vintage paperbacks, which impressed me. These titles are quite affordable.


They have a large section devoted to sci-fi, as well as for mystery, and general fiction. The books tend to be in the Acceptable - Good range, occasionally the Very Good condition, but Like New is rare.

I was able to get an Edge / Adam Steele team-up (!), surely a major milestone in the 'Piccadilly Western' genre. 

Then there was a vintage Bantam copy of Kingsley Amis's James Bond novel 'Colonel Sun'. An old-time Gold Medal title about a 'World Without Women', and 'The Wild One', a teen motorcyclist adventure from 1970. 

I'm not familiar with the Dan Morgan novel, but I have heard that 'On Wheels', the John Jakes novel, is a worthy read (Science Fiction Ruminations gave it a 3 of 5 Star review).
I also found some vintage paperbacks about hot rods, the Vietnam War, a novelization of a low-budget, drive-in, 1977 CB / Trucker film, and......... when 'Me and Jim Luke' tangled with the Ku Klux Klan - ! 

(I had to Google the 'Klan' in order to spell their name right, so I guess Google now has my IP address flagged as belonging to a possible 'extremist' personality).

'Me and Jim Luke' apparently is fetching very steep asking prices on the web, with copies at amazon priced at $31. I was lucky to find a Good / Acceptable copy for under $5.

Anyways, if you find yourself in the Richmond area, you may want to stop in at Bargain Books  !
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5 comments:

  1. LawrenceJune 14, 2023 at 2:46 PM

    If you're ever in a place with a large enough Japanese immigrant/expat population, there is a chain of used book stores called Bookoff which buys books, CD's and video games. The books are usually 50% Japanese language, 50% English

    https://www.bookoffusa.com/store-location/

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  2. tarbanduJune 14, 2023 at 5:37 PM

    Hmmmm, never heard of that chain before. Looking at their website, most of their stores are on the West Coast (save for NYC and Honolulu). I'll keep an eye out for the store should I be in those places.

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  3. Joachim BoazJune 15, 2023 at 2:54 AM

    I reviewed the Jakes on my site.

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  4. tarbanduJune 15, 2023 at 3:47 PM

    Hmm, can you post the url of your review here in the Comments ?

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  5. Joachim BoazJune 15, 2023 at 4:58 PM

    I have a handy index by author and rating! https://sciencefictionruminations.com/science-fiction-book-reviews-by-author/

    The review in question: https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2017/01/03/book-review-on-wheels-john-jakes-1973/

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