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-Tell us a little about yourself. Bookselling is my second career. As a ’74 graduate of the US Coast Guard Academy, I spent the first 23 years of my professional life as a “Coastie.” In the mid-80s, I discovered collecting first editions, Charles Dickens specifically. Knowing that someday I would be pursuing something other than Search & Rescue as a career, I looked at antiquarian bookselling as a possible pursuit. I established the business in 1989, home-based, and found I e

As a general rule, whenever I go to a foreign country for vacation, I start reading about the area several months in advance. I try to read at least one good traveler’s history, some novels set in that country, and one or two travel memoirs. This October, our vacation plans changed at the last minute. My wife and I found ourselves traveling unexpectedly to Portugal and by the time we boarded the plane, I had read only one rather dry traveler’s concise history. We had made sev

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