San Antonio, TX. This burg will never be accused of being a book town. Visiting the city - which possesses one of the loveliest downtown areas in the country - only one rare book shop was found: The History Shop, located across the street from the Alamo. It was not impressive; concentrating on weapons, maps and some books, its diorama of the Alamo is about the best that can be said for it. The Antiquarian Book Mart is located outside the downtown area; I did not have an opportunity to check it out. As far as new book shops, the...
On the Length of Subtitles in Many Old, Rare and Antiquarian Books,
Or, the Custom of Publishers of olde to Load the title page with a Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Contents so complete that when finished perusing one’s need to Read the Actual Book is obviated and further Exploration Unnecessary; title pages as Cliffs Notes, Advertisements, Promotional material, Infomercials, and other forms of Ballyhoo meant to capture the Prospective Reader’s imagination and Cash at a time when there were no attractive Dust Jackets or other means of Merchandising books, and reading a title page with War and Peace longitude was like going to Wallach’s Music City, choosing a new record,...
My (sort of) Fourteenth-Century Bar Mitzvah
And so it came to pass that on the 27th day of Tishri in the year 5725, young Stephen ben Kenneth ben Edward ben Morris ben Aaron of the House of Gertz (formerly Gershowitz, “Horse Traders to the Czar Since 1826”), who dwelt in the land of Queens in the province of New Judea also known as La Ciudad de Nueva York, reached his majority and was accepted into the congregation as a man because God, blessed be He who bestows savings bonds, apparently figures that when a boy’s sperm squad is mature enough for successful reconnaissance and friendly fire...
“Always Lead With Bestiality”
If every book tells a story, every book has a story, bibliography tells the story of the book, and cataloging a rare book tells the story of that particular copy.But there is a fundamental difference between cataloging for the trade and cataloging for an institution: rare book dealers have to sell the books they catalogue. How you tell the story of your copy can be the difference between a sale and a shelf-puppy.Presuming that you know the fundamentals of collation, including collation by signature if you have an antiquarian book before you, physical description, and have marshaled your reference citations,...
Erotika Biblia At The Colophon Club
Colophons will be swollen and printer slugs tumescent when Bruce Whiteman, Head Librarian at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library of U.C.L.A. in Los Angeles, presents an address to The Colophon Club of San Francisco on October 13, 2009 titled Erotika Biblia or, Collecting Naughty Books at a Distinguished Institutional Library (Not at the Public’s Expense, I Assure You).Bruce has been kind to share in advance with me the text of his lecture. In it, he discusses William Clark’s personal interest in erotica, erotica esoterica, and the kind of material in this area that Bruce has been acquiring for the...