Nothing makes me happier than discovering a copy of a good book—in mint condition, no less—in a second-hand bookstore.
The ritual is always the same; you are going about your way when you walk pass a second-hand bookstore. You know most of the titles a second-hand bookstore has do not interest you. But you stop nonetheless, thinking ‘Oh well, maybe I’ll find something this time.’
So you do stop and browse. From whichever column you start first, you let your gaze hover across each spine. You stand there zig-zagging your gaze from one column to the next. Inevitably, it is the more striking or colorful spines you look at for just a little while more. That, or if you see the name of a certain author.
Then you spot a title you know you’ll like, and you pluck it out from the rest of the stack, hoping it is in mint or near-mint condition. If it is, you are happy as a clam; if it isn’t, you deliberate for only just a little while before deciding a good title should have a good home to go to, and you buy it anyway. You emerge from the bookstore, your new purchase clasped in your hand, and you go on your way. From there to wherever you are going, you open the book and read a few pages at random as you commute before you go home that night and bring it to bed.
I count this and the mint illustrated hardback print of Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison En Enfer I chanced upon in Taipei as my best finds so far.
34, male and very Cancerian. Often irascible, even if he is prescient to his emotions. Lives for the resonance of beautiful passages, cinematic magic and aural bliss. Dabbles in 
i always get neckache looking sideways at the book titles in the library.
they should do something humane.