Central Valley Bookstore Tour: Lightly Used Books
From the Editor's Desk
Now that we are rounding off our final bookstore shop locally, we return to Lightly Used Books. Lightly Used Books is a used bookstore in downtown Turlock that was purchased on a whim in 2020. It is the other extreme in this trifecta of local bookshops. The shelves are not curated but instead represent the democratic mass of donated books to a local business.
The former Yesterday’s Books spent an hour going through plastic bags of old covers people brought in and paid pennies on the dollar for a third of them. Lightly Used Books will take up your spines and pay you nothing.
I do not know what happens next in the process at Lightly Used Books. At the central check-out kiosk stacks of books act as a wall between spaces. Owner Jenni Brannan has handed the keys to another who works by day, posting Instagram bulletins and blurbs about the shops, answers and attending to customers, but lacks the cheerful familiarity Brannon brought to the business. And although she seemed disinterested when I suggested relocating of my favorite author from general to classics, during my next visit, I saw the move was made. The 1930s Nobel Prize winner, Sigrid Undset, was where she belonged, with the classics.
Lightly Used Books is the place for the hunt, a place with low stakes to try something new. I bought more poetry there than anywhere. I do not know where it comes from. Where are these great poetry lovers. Perhaps it is the fruit of a university town of frequently a bookshop in a university town.
There is plenty of general fiction, old cookbooks and decorating books and a large religion section with Christianity's greatest megachurch hits. The children's section is the place where you can fund unexpected treasures and give-a-way drivel, but few of the new prize winners.
It is a destination worth setting, even if I miss seeing Brannon’s smiling face and the way she called my children “love” and made them feel loved just by the way she answered the questions.
Bookstores are more than books. They are community spaces, research destinations and third spaces ripe for a relationship, be it the meet-cute, the budget date or the budding friendship. However, this favorite place of mine evolves, I’ll be back to travel along with it.
This piece originally ran in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on January 28, 2025, a weekly print-only newspaper committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with permission.
Updated to add:
On February 15, Lightly Used Books announced it is closing its doors for the last time on March 30. The cost of rent, the construction blocking its entrance for what would have been three of its busiest months, and the challenges of running a business that sells low-cost goods in this high-cost world, have made it impossible to continue operations in a brick-and-mortar location. The business will continue online only.
Lightly Used Books sales dropped after the opening of Bookish in Modesto, and with these factors, along with almost no in-house events, foot traffic continued to remain low.
It’s a point of sorrow to me that a region with over 300,000 people cannot sustain two used bookstores. Stay tuned for my thoughts on bookstores role in the community and some ideas on what might be their saving grace.