Used books,” as if someone else has had the best of them and you get the sere husk, or the lees, as if a book isn’t the one thing, the one product, that is forever new. There’s no such thing as a used book. Or there’s no such thing as a book if it’s not being used.

Used" is such an odd word, so much stranger than "second-hand." A prefix for condoms, and there's a certain squalor attached to the idea of reusing those.

He could judge with reasonable accuracy the amount of use a book had had. The first item to show any sign of wear was the dust jacket at the top and bottom of the spine. Little tears or cracks in the paper appeared here if a book had been taken off a shelf as much as three or four times.

It's bad rhyme and by and large, good books for kids are better than that.

Celebrity children's books don't sell based on whether they are good or not. They sell based on whether parents want to buy the celebrity's name or not.

I'm not used to interviews. People don't generally interview waitresses.