too long between time

not that I haven't acquired any books, nor sold any, but I haven't written anything. Sorry, have been a terrible blogster.

I recently found a copy of Modern Book Collecting by Robert Wilson. Published in 1980, this book has been considered an informed resource in the world of book collecting. While I found some information in the book worthwhile, overall it was very dated. The well respected Wilson had no inkling of the world that collectors in the 21st century would be facing. His forty years of experience in the "way it was" doesn't really help those of us in the cyberland of the way things ARE.

Wilson was a dealer as well as a collector and bibliographer. His perspective is different from one who collects, and doesn't own a respected downtown book salon (Wilson owned the Phoenix Book Shop in New York City). Some of his tales are comparable to those of John Baxter and others - being in the right place at the right time, having relationships with certain authors that are rewarded handsomely down the road, knowing the value of a particular author's work or the possible value in the future (yadda yadda), but his methodology has been compromised by the Internet - by Amazon - by ABE. Auctions are not the preferred way to option books, unless one is well heeled and well connected to a world of elitist collectors and international jet sets most of us would not ever get entrance into to begin with.

Wilson dismisses flea markets, library sales, used bookstores, etc. as meritless pursues for items that are merely "fools gold", yet to counter this claim, I just found a SIGNED copy of Throat Sprockets (a book that I greatly admire even though it's disturbing) by Tim Lucas in a used bookstore for a buck. In perfect condition!

I also found my biggest find to date, the 1936 Dawn Powell first edition Turn, Magic Wheel at a secondhand shop for a dollar as well. My guess is that the intended "vicitms" of his book are beginners, who the books was written to help anyway. I am somewhere between rookie and expert. I have had the luck too, which any collector has, for again "being in the right place at the right time." I will agree with Robert Wilson that it's important to collect things that interest you. That much we can agree on.

Booking Pleasures by Jack Matthews, published by Ohio University Press in 1996 is a companion to the Wilson book but views things from the author/collector's perspective as an academic as well as a collector of regional material. His stories are more telling as they are more homespun, more regional in nature, and the author's inclination to gather material for its own sake rather than Wilson's dealer mentality. Matthews never mentions turning a profit nor even selling his finds. That's at least half of Wilson's game. Booking Pleasure is a good read. They both are, really.

it's hard to not be obsessed about it

Books, I mean. Not "reading devises", I will never own one of those. But books themselves. Ink on paper. Leading in many directions of thought at the same time. Acquiring, preserving, handling, caring. The whole thing. Not only that but following arguments and discussions in print.

For example, what was Annie Dillard's problem with Alain Robbe-Grillet? In her 1982 book Living By Fiction she rails about Robbe-Grillet and his "novels". She does not find anything redeeming about his work. This is well before her own first novel was to appear, her 1992 book The Living. I read her 1989 book The Writing Life in which she is discussing things and writing fiction.....she is preparing for her novel. It's interesting to see this all being worked out on paper in various books. And yet, she really had a distinct dislike for the books by Robbe-Grillet which I don't get. Had she ever met Alain Robbe-Grillet? Was it personal or professional dislike?

That one might not be solved anytime soon. I can't give it too much attention as my family is preparing to move out of our 2 bedroom apt. into a 2 bedroom house with a little tree-filled back yard. Everything is being packed up - and by everything I mean our meager furniture and kitchen items and our 4,000 books.

Thomas Jefferson's library

There was a link I tried to place here for a piece from the Smithsonian website concerning a project to research and locate copies of all the books that had been in the library of President Thomas Jefferson that was sold to the Congress, and perished in the library fire of 1851. However, that link disappeared and so - oops.

a frugal experiment

so, I am writing here primarily for myself and whoever else happens to click through but all the same I wanted to record somewhere my new frugal experiment as it pertains to book acquiring. For the next block of time - undefined - I am refraining from sending any cash on books. That doesn't mean that I am not acquiring them, nor am I stealing them. I am just not buying them.


this started about a week ago - I just wanted to see how it would go. How, you may ask, can you get books for FREE? Well, the local library actually has several milk cartons near the elevator in the front lobby where books are left FREE for the taking, and I am often surprised by the books donated to the library that they don't want or are left by patrons. I have taken home and sold at least $200.00 worth of such books in the year that we have lived here. It's pretty startling.


I also take advantage of book exchanges at coffeehouses. For instance, I exchanged some dull paperbacks yesterday for a 1938 coffee table book called "Adventures of America : 1857-1900" from the archives of the Harper's Weekly, a "hardbound" (although it feels pretty soft to me) The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson in One Volume, plus two British paperbacks of novels that I was not familiar with either the title or the author. For me, a successful trip to get cookies for my kids and a refill of coffee for myself.

Then there is Bookmooch and PaperbackSwap. Yes, anyone who has been to these sites can respond that I have to pay for postage if someone wants to "mooch" a book from me, true. But I can also request books from others that they pay postage for as well, and some of those I have also sold for a profit online. Or bulked up my own collection. In fact, I have added twenty books over the past week without paying any cash. While at the same time donating or selling off another twenty-three books for a net LOSS of three books (always a consideration when your spouse counts the books as often as mine does) - okay, I am half kidding.

and so it goes....

interesting book

went into Alexandria, VA late last week with my kidlets and went into a second-hand shop that I used to frequent, and found a number of books that I thought were pretty cool and one that was (for me at least) downright interesting. It was a hardbound first edition of Peter Gay's Weimar Culture: the outsider as insider.

The copy appears to have been signed by the author but it is also so underlined and annotated that it's really difficult to see through the notations, but - I have always been interested in Bauhaus and the Weimar Republic so, I got the book and it is extremely informative and well written and I will be keeping the copy after finishing just because.

the previous owner, I have to say, was a boob - but....

talk about being "book obsessed"...

no, i am a little bad about books but this guy has 35,000 books in his house and he doesn't have a bookstore or a cyber store. HE is obsessed. I am merely consumed.

hard enough to keep up with oneself

life is busy, complicated (when one has kids), and stressful (when looking for new diggs)

so, I forget what all I have going on - like the number of blogs I am polluting the internet with. Here's one that has been overlooked lately. This is not to suggest that I have not lessened my obsession with books. Hardly that. It's been remarkable how many books find their way into my clutches.

chapbooks, older books, odd material.

let me plunge back into my horde and give you some examples: