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“In October 1985, three bombs exploded in Salt Lake City, killing two innocent people & injuring a third, Mark Hofmann. Subsequent investigations revealed that the young documents dealer, Mark W. Hofmann, had planned and executed the bombings to cover up a five-year trail of deceit and forgery. Over twenty years have passed since Hofmann began his notorious career and while Hofmann spends his days at the Utah State Prison, his forgeries continue to appear in the marketplace a

I have been taking a look lately at how books & booksellers are portrayed in the pop culture….and it ain’t pretty folks. If you were to pick up a remote today, you would find that only two prime time shows display the reading of books as an important part of their everyday routine: West Wing and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, [ain’t that a kick in the head?] and the only one presently portraying anyone reading for pleasure is Gilmore Girls. Oh sure, you may see a kid doing their h

David, when did you start being a book collector? Was it a particular book or subject that got you started? At some point in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s I decided that I wanted to express my artistic side by learning and doing photography. As was my habit, I learned by reading…lots and lots of how-to books on the technical and artistic aspects of photography. My specialty, motivated by my then hobby of growing flowering plants, especially lilies and day lilies, was close-

The basis of the past popularity of Lost Race novels were the novels of H. Rider Haggard, whose excellence in such classic novels as Allan Quatermain and She hundreds of lesser talents recognized as worthy of imitation. Of course, Haggard didn’t invent the idea of lost races, which was abroad from antiquity, in cultural myths about submerged former inhabitants of conquered regions, in utopians and Swiftian satires of distant island cultures, in speculations on the whereabouts

(Keynote Speech from the Summer 2002 Colorado Book Seminar) First, the beginnings – at least for me. Dick Weatherford By the time this particular day rolled around in late October, 1978, about a week before Halloween, I had been buying and selling books for a half dozen years. I had a book catalog finished and at the printer, but my “real” job was as an Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University. My wife, Harriet, and I had two sons, Matt, age 9, and Steve, a

Among those who post regularly on the message boards of the various booksellers’ communities that I frequent, it is safe to say that the company Amazon.com and its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos are somewhat unpopular. While this phenomenon is not universal, there is a culture of Amazon-bashing across all these communities, in which no topic or rumor is too trivial or too grand for the regulars to resist taking potshots. Bezos is blamed for everything that is perceived as being w

During the Gulf War it was said that folks were sitting down to watch the children’s television show, Mr. Roberts’ Neighborhood, with their children. It was comforting to watch a placid program that could be counted on to just give calm, soothing sounds, sights and welcoming words and simple ideas of family and friendship. Now, again we are inundated with our ‘way-of-the-world’ news. Sometimes it is just too much to take in and process. We have to turn off the TV news. You ar

Part of the fun of being a bookseller is the never-ending opportunity to learn more about books and writers. I consider myself especially fortunate as a seller of used books to have such a wide world of material from which to choose. Walk into a new bookstore and you know pretty much what you can expect to see. But walk into a used bookstore and you never know what you might run into. In a used bookstore you may find a book heretofore unknown to you, a book published 10, 20,