book and author reviews
Like a junkie seeking a secret fix, I furtively ordered a copy of Other People’s Books Association Copies and the Stories They Tell. I must confess to a penchant for books signed by their authors and inscribed to professional colleagues, family members or friends.
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Wilson left his job at a cuckoo clock factory and scraped together the necessary $12,000, which was a tidy sum in 1962. His previous experience in the rarified world of bookmanship was basically limited to a serious hunt for the first editions of four particular authors. Wilson quickly realized that he was in over his head and the figures were not adding up, so he threw all his energy into printing and mailing out catalogs (some 1500), following the pattern set forth by fourth Phoenix owner Larry Wallrich in Catalogs 50 through 59 (there were no earlier numbers because he…
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Anyone who has gone to Boston to look for rare books in this century will have memories of Goodspeed’s Book Shop.
Blurbettes: Faux Real: Genuine Leather and 200 Years of Inspired Fakes by Robert Kanigel (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2007) comes with two holes in the dust jacket. More on that later. From the front inside flap. “What makes genuine leather genuine? What make real things…real? In an age of virtual reality, veneers, synthetics, plastics, fakes, and knockoffs, it’s hard to know. “Over the centuries, men and women have devoted enormous energy to making fake things seem real. As early as the 14th century, fabric was treated with special oils to make it resemble leather. In the 1870s came Leatherette,…
Ye Olde Booksellers Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms by Guido Bruno (Detroit: The Douglas Book Shop, 1922) is further excerpted, though now from a new personal copy hand numbered 925 of 1,000 printed. The Romance of a Chicago Book Dealer Wells Street, between the river and East Chicago Avenue, is the Bowery of Chicago. Once a residential section, now the old mansions and frame cottages, hastily erected after the fire, are dilapidated and are used as lodging houses and factories of the inferior sort. Here and there a modern structure, a storage house or an industrial plant.…
A Backward Look: 50 Years of Maine Books and Bookmen Francis M. O’Brien. Portland, ME: Anthoensen Press, 1986. My first impression of this book is that it’s only 49 pages long, which is good because the deadline is only a week away. And the author spends half the time on non-book topics. His family history. A rather idyllic childhood in the “Forest City.” Many early jobs, including sitting in a tent on a hill near a bridge and recording all the incoming state license plates for the Maine Publicity Bureau. Almost getting fired as an usher. (“Ma’am, we say please…