The Marvelous Bookstore

One of my favorite bookstores in the world is in downtown Hillsville.

It's Deez Beez Books in downtown Hillsville, and it's a treasure trove of used books.

They have such an amazing selection. Every time I go in, I want to buy everything in the store.

Instead, I only bought the books I absolutely needed for my upcoming trip to Alaska and the Yukon. (I'm not going to the Polar Sea, but this might be as close as I ever get.)

This is David's incredible find. It was next to some French books, and the title had almost been completely worn away, so he almost didn't pick it up. It turned out to be an out-of-print Greek text and commentary of Xenophon's Anabasis. For a classics professor who studies historiography, that's hitting the used book jackpot!

Blaine Dillon, who runs Deez Beez along with his wife Melissa, showed us his incredible find, an old letterprint press that runs by foot pedal. The tabletop models are in demand and expensive, Blaine told us, but you can find these floor models that people are giving away to anyone who can haul them. This one belonged to a man in Pennsylvania whose family had been in the printing trade for four generations. It works perfectly. It's hard to see in the dim lighting, but it's a beautiful piece of machinery with a spinning wooden wheel on the side. The person saying, "Whoa!" is Blaine's three-year-old son.

Blaine got everything that came with the printing press, including this stand with a stone slab for arranging type, made out of an old tombstone.

And drawers full of type from the 1800s. I can't wait to see the letterpress cards he's going to make -- maybe when we're back in Hillsville in August.