Today was my first trip to Rainy Day Paperback Exchange and I am more than satisfied with my experience. For the past year I've been helping clean out a family member's hoarding house, and it just so happens this particular hoard contains an unbelievable amount of books. Today, I toyed with the idea of going to Book Trader Cafe, but I wasn't keen on the idea of fighting with downtown New Haven traffic and lack of parking, only to spend precious time and energy lugging mass quantities of books around the block just to be told that they can't take anything and have to lug it all back to my car, feeling stressed and disappointed. I remembered seeing flyers for this locale at a convention last fall, and figured I would give this place a shot. Not only was Honorah, the owner, very gracious with helping me get the bins upon boxes upon baskets of books out of my car, but she also was kind enough to offer to donate whatever she couldn't take to the Mark Twain Library, since she knew I traveled 45 minutes from Seymour and figured she'd save me as much time as possible. This was very encouraging, since Book Trader usually donates the books they're given to New Haven Reads but didn't the last time I went there. To be fair, this may have been due to the age or relevance of the books that were donated, but anyway, this isn't meant to be a compare and contrast, just a slight informative aside from someone who's been casually selling used books for a few years now.
Honorah was also very understanding and compassionate about the hoarding issue, which is a godsend for anyone who's had to live with the embarrassment and stress that hoarding can cause. She also made a lot of helpful suggestions of what to do with books that are obsolete and how to recycle awkward items that I might find during the clean-out process.
Last but not least, as mentioned in other reviews, the doggie there is ADORABLE! He's very playful and friendly and really makes the buying/selling experience all the better.
So, in closing, if you aren't looking to pay top dollar for a good read, like you would at Barnes and Noble or some big name book store, and you either aren't close to Book Trader Cafe or don't want to fight the swarms of Yalies and one-way streets for a used book, or if you're like me and you're looking to sell some books (they mainly do store credit, except for NEW text books), this is the place for you. An added bonus is that there's a nice coffee store literally right behind Rainy Day, so you can pick up some excellent coffee while you're there and successfully scratch two things off your to do list at once! Most excellent! read more