Bookseller Review: Piedmont Books

Piedmont Books

3800 Reynolda Rd.

Winston-Salem, NC

336.923.2437

www.piedmontusedbooks.com

Piedmont Books has over 40,000 gently used books, CDs, DVDs and video games at up to 75% the original retail price. Buy, sell and trade.

What we like: Piedmont has a surprisingly strong classics section, with a wide variety of titles and age of editions. The prices are fair.

What we don't like: It also sells the stuff we prefer not have in a bookstore, but it feels like a bookstore first, and that counts for something.

Would we go again? Considering we feel this was the best bookstore we found in Winston-Salem, we would definitely go back any time we visit.

Bookseller Review: Laster's Fine Art & Antiques

Laster's Fine Art & Antiques

664 S. Stratford Rd.

Winston-Salem, NC

336.724.7544

www.lastersfineart.com

Laster's specializes in handling estates and collections and their retail store contains valuable paintings, prints, fine antiques, rare coins, and rare books. Most of their collection is leather-bound.  

What we like: Upon first entering, we wondered where the books were. But we soon found multiple bookcases loaded with some good titles, and older editions. All hardcovers, many from the late-19th and early-20th century.

What we don't like: Even for what they have, many seemed priced too high. The few that we checked out specifically we know to be pirated or unauthorized copies, a common practice around the turn of the last century, so the prices for those seemed steep.

Would we go again? Yes. The possibility of finding some real gems here definitely exists, so we'd be crazy not to visit any time we were in Winston-Salem.

Bookseller Review: Edward McKay Used Books

Edward McKay Used Books & More

115 Oakwood Dr.

Winston-Salem, NC

336.724.6133

www.feedyourhead.net/ws

Edward McKay is a used-book store chain in North Carolina. Their Winston-Salem store has over 10,000 square feet of used books, textbooks, audiobooks, CDs, vinyl records, DVDs, VHS, and video games. Their inventory comes mostly from the public, so their stock changes every day. 

What we like: There are certainly a ton of titles, and store is well-organized and easy to browse.

What we don't like: For us, many of the editions are too new, likely many of them being used in recent college courses. And we prefer our used-book stores to not also have "Twilight: Breaking Dawn" movie posters hanging on the wall.

Would we go again? Not likely if we go back to Winston-Salem, but we're not opposed to checking out some of the other Edward McKay stores in North Carolina.

Left in the Leaves: Edgar Allan Poe Stories

After exiting the Forsyth library sale with our $5 bag of goodies, I began flipping through the Edgar Allan Poe Stories from 1961 that we found. Inside, I was tickled to find not one, but two little treats. The first is a business card for the Drifters Reef Motel on Carolina Beach, and scrawled on the back is Richard Lortie 670 W 6th ST, 724-9xxx with Sat. 10am. Interesting...

The other funny thing is an old order form for a Nifty Doodles-in-Gold kit. The order form says the offer expires on June 30, 1963. Sweet.

New title (6/19/12): Left in the Leaves

One of the secondary pleasures of finding an old classic is the occasional discovery of some historical artifact within -- but not of -- its pages. We once found a rare-looking butterfly pressed between the pages of a c.1896 Cooper novel. We've read some interesting inscriptions, found dated receipts, old business cards, order forms for products from a time long ago, etc. Our "Inside the Book" "Left in the Leaves" series of posts will divulge any amusing or otherwise noteworthy findings within the pages of our used books.