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I’ve always had mixed feelings about thoroughbred flat track and steeplechase racing. Many of the horses probably like it on some level, but they get hurt and killed too (though others retire to the greenest of all pastures). It seems to be mainly about idle amusement and gambling addictions, with the burden on the beasts. Historic and gorgeous Saratoga Springs is nearby though—the track there being voted one of the top ten sports venues in the world—and I’ve begun to enjoy g

Of Bookmen & Printers: A Gathering of Memories, by Ward Ritchie. Los Angeles, CA: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1989. Books about booksellers can be overly aware of how legendary they are, or steeped in formality and tradition, but this California-style treatment is just plain laid back and likeable. The author quit law school and went off to study printing with a French master in the late 1920s, became a denizen of book row in downtown Los Angeles when there was still a there there, s

Before getting into the book business, I taught Colorado & Western American History at a local college. I couldn’t help noticing that every time there was a budget crunch, they laid off faculty members (never administrators!). This did not give one a sense of security, so I decided to be prepared. Using my private collection of about 600 books on the American West, I opened the surprisingly named Western Americana Bookshop in a corner of the Nepenthes Café, a period coffee sh

When I was six years old my mother took me to the library and I got my first library card. I felt like I had just been given the key to a wonderful treasure chest. I still feel that way. Like most of the booksellers I have met, I have always been an avid reader. During the summer when I did not have to go to school, I would ride the city bus to the nearest library, check out seven books which was the limit, read a book per day, and then take them back next week and get seven

Hi, I am Bronwyn Smith of Dromanabooks, Australia. Dromanabooks is an online-only bookshop supplying non-fiction to clients in Australia, Europe, the USA and Asia. Visit my website at www.Dromanabooks.com.au where I have about 11,000 titles on offer. I don’t have any obvious specialties, perhaps because as a former Reference Librarian (now retired), I have such a broad range of interests. I am a Graduate of the National Library School, Canberra 1969, and the Australian Nation

Happy Hits Relying on a general internet search for some information on a new book titled Great Graves of Upstate New York, Google asked, “Did you mean Great Grapes of Upstate New York?” This reminds me of another time some automated spellchecker didn’t like how I abbreviated New York Public Library down to NYPL. “Wrong. Try nipple.” Blurbettes From the dust jacket rear panel of The Triumph of the Fungi: A Rotten History, by Nicholas P. Money (NY: Oxford University Press, 200

Book Store Lore “Yet More Bookworm Droppings” by Stuart Manley Back in the sixties, in an earlier life, I used to work night shift in a telephone exchange. For our younger readers, in these days of mobile phones, 3G and web communication, I will need to explain. In the not too distant past, none of this was available. Local calls were the only calls you could dial yourself. Everything else had to go through an operator—trunk calls or long-distance. And international calls wer

Table of Contents From the editor The Bane of the Online Book World: Mega-Listers Plagiarism and Online Bookselling Defining Mega-Listers Megalisters: Big and Online Mega-Lister Questionnaire An Interview with Mike Goodenough Books, Books Everywhere, But Not a Page to Read, or, a Book Dealer’s Travels in Spain Ephemeral Assays: Herbarium Symposium Book Reviews The Art of the Book & Beauty and the Book Book Review: Books, Friends, and Bibliophilia by Anton Gerits How I Spent M