Like a Bull in a China Shop: Sam in a Book Store

Pretty much the title says it all. I'm slightly obsessed with bookstores. When I was younger I was obsessed with libraries... yeah you can see a trend here. So last night Grant and I decided to finally go to this bookstore down the street from us. Now I've been wanting to go to this bookstore because well, it's a bookstore but the main reason though I wanted to go there was the name: Daedalus Books.

The first time I heard about this online store (and the subsequent warehouse that happens to be in Maryland) I was a senior in high school. I was taking a mythology class and for one of our projects we had to find an example of mythology in advertisements and write about it. That's when I discovered Daedalus Books. For those of you who don't know who Daedalus was here's a short synopsis of who he was and of the famous Greek myth:

Daedalus was one of the great inventors, architects and artisans of Ancient Greece and is credited with the invention of the axe, saw, ceramic wheel and even the masts of boats. Yes, he was actually a real person; like many other cultures, Greeks centered their myths around real historical figures. One of the greatest known of his accomplishments was  his plan for the Minoan Palace of Knossos, one of the most important archaeological sites in Crete and Greece today. 

The way the myth goes, Daedalus built many great structures for King Minos but at some point Daedalus and Minos' relationship deteriorated. There are several different explains to sudden rift, but the most popular has to do with the labyrinth that Daedalus created for Minos. See King Minos wanted a building that he could cast his enemies into that would both make sure they couldn't get out and that the mythological minotaur couldn't either. His enemies would then be killed by the Minotaur. The way the story goes though is after Minos imprisoned Theseus in the labyrinth, Daedalus advised Princess Ariadne to give Theseus the thread that helped him kill the Minotaur and escape the labyrinth.

Minos was infuriated when found out about the betrayal and imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus in the Labyrinth. Daedalus being the inventor he was, fashioned a set of wings for his son out of wax, feathers and wood and they were able to fly out of the labyrinth. Later though, after being scolded by his father not to fly to close to the sun, Icarus did. The wax on his wings than melted.

That's the cliffnotes version of the story, which happens to be one of my favorite stories in Greek Mythology. Funny enough it was the TV show "Wishbone" that got me so into that myth. The point of me telling you the whole back story is to show you how excited I was to go to this bookstore.

Daedalus Books is mainly an online shop for "New, Remainder Books, Overstock CDs, DVDs at a Discount Price." I have used them to order books in the past because of their great prices but I have never gone to the store. The warehouse style store can be seen from Rt. 32 and every-time I drove past it I was intrigued. It is the only brick and mortar store that they have in the country and lucky for me it's about 5 minutes from our apartment.

Last night though was the first time we went. I went just wanting to look around and Grant wanted to get some books that he could read on his upcoming business trips. We spent over an hour in the store (though I could've spent a lot more) just looking around at all the different books, CDs and DVDs they had to offer. Most were under 7 dollars so of course we were immensely happy.

After about 30 minutes I found the holy grail: The Anthropology section. Now granted, it wasn't that big only a section of a large shelf but it had some amazing books none the less. I have an obsession with enthnographies so I had to hold myself back from buying the whole section that was filled with them along with a handful of evolution books.

So there you have it, a great books store that has some great deals and a great names.


References:
"Daedalus - the greatest inventor in Ancient Greece" http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/daedalus-inventor-ancient-greece/