Everyone intuitively knows the benefits of reading long-form in our low-attention and distracted economy dominated by TikToks and instant gratification. But where do you find motivation for getting through classics like Anna Karenina, or even the latest Sally Rooney novel that is supposedly entertaining? The answer lies in used book stores.

Exhuming and reviving the would-be corpuses of books in clustered shelves under musty staircases is quintessential in the experience of used bookstores—this has developed into my frequent, comforting pastime. Bracketing the palpable joy in finding a used novel in near-mint condition that you’ve been on the hunt for the past six months and obvious environmental benefits, there’s more to browsing and procuring secondhand books compared to the one-click-buy option on Amazon.

Locating a book in the stacks of the library or an indie neighbourhood store takes time—the extensive acquisition process raises your likelihood of reading, as humans appreciate things that are harder to come by. Take advantage of this mechanic and avoid purposing books into sophisticated tabletop decor to impress guests, or a Zoom background that displays your apparent intellectual prowess (you deserve to do so only if you’ve read the book). Use the friction and organized chaos of used bookstores as a propellant to clear your reading list.

The time between you desiring a book and you getting a copy builds wholesome anticipation. Release it by consuming that long-awaited story in one sitting, or in a 24 hour readathon.

The exploitation and exploration strategy can also be readily applied in independent, local secondhand book shopping. In reinforcement learning, the exploitation means you take the optimal move according to a defined policy, while exploration means you introduce a degree of randomness into learning to prevent yourself from being stuck in a local optimum. Balancing between exploitation and exploration is aligned with the nature of used bookstores. You might find what you came for, but you will accidentally see titles outside your preferred authors or genres, which is not the case in cleanly sectioned Barnes and Nobles.

Used bookstores are curated by the tastes, aesthetics, and curiosities of the staff and local culture—the zeitgeist of the current epoch and of a bygone era—not simply the popular titles appealing to the masses. They reflect a kind of collective intellect of a group of people—maybe a group with mental frameworks you wish to emulate.

Perhaps Seattle stores are dominated by political commentary and hip literature, where in the San Francisco bookshops, stacks are overflowing with entrepreneurship volumes and queer fiction. My favourite are Free Libraries: wooden boxes where people can donate and take free books. They function like hyper-localized-neighbourhood-hive-minds; perusing titles is not far from the peering into the personality and quiddity of a region.

If you flipped through used books, apart from the forsaken efforts of highlighting and scribbly annotations in the margins, you might be able to collect feather bookmarks, read thoughtful notes addressed to friends and loved ones, or be confronted by a secret of the previous owner. Such human touches are the type of unpredictable hits of dopamine that add energy and depth to your reading experience. On the other hand, good luck finding unique memorabilia in novels distributed by Amazon warehouses.

Buying and reading secondhand books is my current (healthy) addiction and form of procrastination. I’d take the surprises in the texture of an old book over the artificial smell of a new book any day. Try visiting a used bookstore in your city—you might just become obsessed.