The other day I lost and found several valuable things at a bookstore.

What I lost amounted to a few hours on what was to be my only day off in weeks. What I found, which more than made up for the loss of time, were many books that got me thinking about new and wonderful things. It was two well-spent hours of exploration and enlightenment.

Being a male shopper, and therefore knowing the extent of my purchases even before leaving my house, I had a plan when I went to the bookstore. I wanted to buy a book on pills. (Don’t worry, it was job-related.) But once I got to the store, I quickly got distracted by everything that lay between the entrance and the medical books section.

First, I checked out the magazines. I had been considering subscribing to several magazines and this particular bookstore had each of them. Astronomy, bird watching, bicycling, gardening. I’ve been wanting to spend more time doing all of these, so it was fun reading the glossy, splashy, inspirational pages.

While checking out the mags, I got a notion to find books on bicycling in Maine. Eventually, I found a book just right. But being the cheapskate I am, I couldn’t justify the impulse purchase, never mind the $19.95 price tag, so I put it back, but not until I’d nearly memorized the location of each bike path.

Next, I found myself in the car section. There was one cool book about cars made by General Motors in the 1970s. A lot of muscle cars I remember from my youth were in there, the Chevy Chevelle SS and the Chevy Nova among them.

Once I got sick of looking at old cars and remembering my need for a pill guide, I happened to walk by the test prep section, populated by all sorts of practice exam books with everything from SATs and GREs to ASVABs, MCATs and LSATs. It was a virtual alphabet soup writ large over more than a hundred book bindings. In the news business, I was taught never to use acronyms. But I suppose consumers will know what they are looking at when they seek an exam book. I hope so at least.

It was then, after getting sidetracked trying to answer a question in the analytical section of a law school entrance exam, that I noticed the medical section just a few feet away. With prescription pills on my mind, and a book that would help me make sense of the hundreds of available pills, I set about scouring the section. I finally found one that would work, so I set my course for the cash registers. But, on the way, I happened to stumble upon the bargain book section. That was a mistake.

For the uninitiated, the bargain book section is a bookstore within a bookstore. Rather than having to walk from section to section throughout the store, a whole range of subjects are available within a few steps. There was a book on cat behavior so I could better understand my cats. There was a cool book on Harley Davidson motorcycles. There was an Ansel Adams coffee table book of black and white photography. On and on. There was so much to look at.

But the best bargain book, tucked away in the last aisle, was my original goal for the trip – a hardcover, full-color “AARP Guide to Pills.” It was $7.99 with a 50 percent off sticker stuck on the front cover. Just $4! Needless to say, I returned the $24 book on prescription drugs to the medical books section and proceeded to the checkout line happy with my purchase.

When I left the store, it occurred to me that I felt better than when I had entered and not just because I got a great deal on that pill book. I felt great because I had discovered a lot of fun stuff, everything from old cars to Maine bicycle paths to dizzying LSAT test questions. I learned a lot from wandering the aisles and picking up a book here and there. It was an education. I had surfed the local bookstore, similar to browsing the Web, but in a more tactile, screenless and non-electronic way.

So, here’s to getting caught for hours at a time in a real web, in a bookstore. And here’s to real browsing. We think being able to click from one interesting site to another is something new for us 21st Century types. But since the establishment of bookstores – and libraries for centuries before the arrival of the first bookstore – mankind has been browsing for knowledge. Here’s hoping the new Web doesn’t put an end to this most satisfying and original form of browsing.

John Balentine, of Windham, is a former editor of the Lakes Region Weekly.