It is time to give up the image. Book Collecting is no longer a pursuit confined mostly to rich middle-aged white men.The picture above is of Sophie Dahl and appears in her piece for Men's Vogue titled book lust. On Sept. 11, 2001 when evacuating her NY apartment Dahl says "I took a small bag and filled it with my grandmother's jewelry, childhood letters from my parents, a toothbrush, and a pair of jeans. But the lumpy bulk of it was incurred by my books." This solidifies Dahl's place with the most ardent and true collectors."Miss Dahl is, after all,...
Bookshop Nightmare!
A Bookseller's PrayerPlease God don't make me go in here.I promise to take care of all my booksand be as nice as possible to all my customers.I promise to treat each book and each customer asa special gift from you.Please God don't make me go in there.Flickr set from mistermajik2000Thanks to Library Stuff for the lead
Rare Books, The Bookshop and Open Access
Joseph Campana's piece, Rare Books, appeared on the Kenyon Review blog last week. The jumping off point for Campana was the New York Times article on the closing of the Heritage Book Shop, one of the premier antiquarian book shops in the world.Campana recounts his first memories of encountering a rare book at his college library and how he is as "willing to make a fetish of rare books as the next person." Yet he ends the article by professing to have more of a sense of "ambivalence, not wonder" toward rare books.He then goes on to say that the...
The Heritage Effect. The Book Trade Waits
It has been a long time since a funeral was held at 8540 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. It used to be the home of the Cunningham & O'Connor Mortuary. It was where services were held for such Hollywood legends as Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby and Spencer Tracy.Tomorrow something else is being laid to rest. The legendary Heritage Book Shop. After 44 years in the book business, the last 25 of which were at the old funeral home on Melrose, Ben and Lou Weinstein are cashing out.It doesn't matter if the closure is related to Lou getting tired...
Gotham Breathing
Robert Schuster's piece in the Village Voice "The Gotham Book Mart's Final Chapter" confirms that we haven't heard the last of it."Something's cooking," and "important things happening" is what people in the know are saying."Don't issue a death certificate just yet" says Schuster.Why is this not surprising? The more you talked to veteran booksellers after the auction shenanigans the more you got the sense that this was not the end. There were still too many unanswered questions for it to be over. At minimum, the sheer carnival of the auction guaranteed a second act.The auctioner Eliot Millman sums up the...