Powell's used book buyer Kirsten Berg writes a bi-weekly blog post on the world of rare books.

The fact that they ask is an indication that the book is going to a good home. Too often we see books that have been treated poorly; stored in damp cardboard boxes in a garage or shed, bent or warped, and coated with filth.

Am I exaggerating? Not a bit. The picture to the right shows the mold and water damage suffered by a book that was improperly stored for several years. See the wavy shadow cast by the pages? They have been warped by water. This book is no longer a book — it is garbage. (Though I say "garbage," here at Powell's we recycle books and they are pulped and made into paper once again. I think of it as a form of reincarnation.)

This book doesn't smell so pleasant, either. (I'll share a tip about curing a book of a bad smell in a future posting.)

Even if you store your books in the house, which is of course warm and dry, don't just pile them in a bin and think that your job as caretaker is done. In this photo, these improperly stacked books are being bent and stressed in harmful ways. Books are not contortionists.

Click here to read the rest of Kirsten's post — and check out the archive of all of her blog pieces.

Tourists swarming Pearl District sidewalks. City streets crawling with cars. Another Oregon summer. Fup scoots along the edge of buildings, over stoops and around planters, minding doors and clumsy feet as she passes each threshold, wondering foremost whether Ryan had any luck on the river — will there be fish for the party tonight? — when she hears someone call her name.

"Fup?"

The voice familiar. A young woman's, somewhere ahead along the block.

Birch woods. The stonemason's chimney. Mosquitoes around the tire swing. Sisters in pigtails.

"1991," Fup will tell her guests this evening back at the store. Not for the first time, they'll do the math and marvel. "Penny lived down the road in Maine."

But in the moment, here on Flanders Street, before Fup identifies her old neighbor — despite shorter hair, smarter clothes, and contacts (Fup assumes) in place of her sibling's hand-me-down frames, it's indisputably Penny — her legs nearly give out, her head swirls close to bursting. Sixteen years bridged in an instant, by a word she's heard thousands of times, her own name. Across a continent, through a life's collected memories. All it took was a voice.