A rare gem at the bookstore after work today: a nice old hardcover copy of Tess D’U for fifty cents. Now, Tess was once on frequent rotation at Miette’s Lending Library, until Miette woke up to see that the Library had become not a Library so much as a Free Book Bonanza, and the unwritten rule of rotation not “you take this sweetheart and read it and I’m sure I’ll get it back someday” as “you take this and I will never see of it again and years from now, when I have a yen for it, god only knows where it may be.”