Having been a book dealer, off and on, for the past twenty years or so, I have spent a lot of time in bookstores. Also a lot time in Thrift Stores. Garage Sales, estate sales, and looking in boxes on the curb on trash day. There are slightly different expectations from each of these channels of finding books, but there is one constant when you are looking for items to sale-the books have to be perfect, or as close as possible to perfect. I am always shocked when I go into an old style book maze type bookshop, where books…
Category: books
A Book is a Book-not an eBook
Print is Dead-Egon, Ghostbusters I learn to speak English from a book-Manuel, Fawlty Towers Books in digital form are online and easy enough to read-if you have the patience to sit and read them, which most of is don’t. The computer ebook has a few advantages over their real world counterparts. You can zoom in if you eyes are not that good. You can listen to a sterile computer voice read it for you. You can find a few hundred reviews written by people who seem to love or hate everything they read. I have a few friends that want…
Read a Book Day
smakupfx made the books shown here-his work is very interesting. What was the Last Book You Read? Or more to the point, have you recently read a book at all? Maybe Read a Book Day would be a good time to start. Of course, looking at a blog is reading, just not the same kind of reading that goes with a good book. I’m totally open on this point, I’ll take any book at all. From comic book to Ulysses to the Bible. But I do want it to be a book you have started and finished, which might leave…
The Folio Society
I was once a book dealer and had the occasional Folio Society book to resale. They are fine books for the more part, heavy, attractive, and often with a protective slipcase. These are collectible books made to be lined up on a shelve, and there is nothing wrong with that. The things that make a rare book rare, such a first edition or an edition signed by the author, are not as important as they once were. Though they are still important. All you have to do is read Used and Rare to find that there are still people falling…
Save Money on Textbooks
I’ve always been shocked by how much College textbooks and university textbooks cost. The Wife is a big fan of College and has, from time to time, needed college textbooks. They are expensive. Prices have risen dramatically – up 186% from 1986 to 2006. On every beginning of semester, students are busy to buy cheaper used textbooks and sell their used textbooks from last semester. This is extremely waste time and not much easy to get the so called good quality USED textbooks. Some students may believe that buy BRAND NEW textbooks from college bookstores or university bookstores, and then…
Books that make me want to write
I don’t have a list of these books, but I should. When I was in the seventh grade, I was given a stack of old sci fi mags that had a profound effect on me. They were poorly written, or so I thought-I could do better than that. I believe that it is this very thought that drives all writers to start writing. I can do better than that. But once you start doing so serious reading, you find a lot of stuff that you can’t do better than-Moby Dick springs to mind, and Pride and Prejudice. But even the…
Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World
Having been a book seller, off and on, for about twenty years, I fell in love with The Goldstones’ Used and Rare, Warmly Inscribed, and Slightly Chipped-all books about Real book dealers. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and countless poor yahoos such as myself are just in it for the money-these dealers live and breath rare books. Used and Rare is the story of a couple looking for a copy of War and Peace-only to find that there are gazillions of editions, the better ones priced well out of their range. And well out of the range of most normal people,…
Folio Society and Easton Press
“I cannot live without books.“ –Thomas Jefferson One of the fun things about being a blogger is writing about things you are interested in, like rare books, Easton Press, The Folio Society, and what makes a good book, a good book. In my experience as an occasional book dealer, I have found a number of good books and a number of books that should have been good but turned out not to be. I have been a book dealer, off and on, for the last twenty years or so. I have owned many Folio Society, Easton Press, and Franklin Library…
Top Five Books People Talk About But Don’t Read
How To Talk About Books You Haven’t ReadWhat a great title. I mean, you have to love a book that tells it like it is. Wanna talk about that latest bestseller everyone is talking about? Go For It! The odds are good that no one else has read it either. I have not read How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, but the title was enough to get me thinking. What are some of the greatest books that most people talk about, but never actually read?Being a bookworm myself, I have read most of the books that I talk…