Our trips in the past few years have been there-and-back affairs, due to the complications of figuring out COVID hours/openings, the fickle nature of New England nature, and wanting some amount of post-travel pre-work time to relax. But the end of last week we were in Connecticut, Andrea wanted to go to a used book store, and none of the aforementioned issues were issues, so I suggested we go to the Niantic Book Barn, which met everyone’s requests:

• Andrea: a large, semi-curated but mildly out of control collection of books.
• Lorelei: cats

Andrea found a pile of romance novels:

I just bought a crap ton of paperback romances and romantica dating from the 1930s to early 2000s. Check out my Instagram stories where I’m sharing pics (and commentary of course)!https://t.co/S578iWQU7P pic.twitter.com/TzqdudeynW

— Shelf Love: Romantic Love Stories in Pop Culture (@ShelfLovePod) April 23, 2022

I wouldn’t recommend going far out of the way to stop there, but if you’re by the Connecticut shoreline already it’s a fun stop. You won’t find a lot of good books unless you snipe one that just got sorted or you pull it straight from the newly arrived section. The stuff that accumulates… well, let’s say they had three entire shelves of L. Ron Hubbard.

As for me, I walked out with one, one dollar book. I think it was a steal.