Good old bad books

 

One day in a second-hand bookshop I had a strange idea. Why not read books that are old and obscure, books that never even came close to making it to the best-seller list and write about my strange experience. I knew that in the art world paintings that sell for millions of dollars aren't always the best paintings. Several factors are at play, including the artist's personality, connections, etc. I guess if the artist is really popular even crap could be sold at a high price. I believe there were many books out there that never became popular, but are still very good or even more interestingly very bad. My objective was to find them and read them. This mostly involved reading very old novels. This method led me sometimes to read some of the strangest books that had ever been written but they were interesting for this very reason. All best sellers read the same way, but bad books all sound different from each other. Some bad books are very funny and make you wonder what kind of person wrote them. But I did find some books that could be called gems though they never became popular. When a book becomes a best-seller and everyone reads it, it somehow loses its magic. For me, the whole second-hand book shop reading adventure was one of the most fulfilling things I had ever done. Maybe one day I could use this experience to write a book about the strange books I read, and the stranger lives of people who wrote them. However like most of my projects it never got off the ground, mainly because I did not have time to read. But a funny world awaits anyone who visits second-hand bookshops and reads randomly old novels or short stories or even non-fiction books that never really made it.