yall know any biographies or w/e abt the rare book selling trade? i recently read the michael vinson 'bluffing texas style' abt a texan rare book dealer turned forger/arsonist etc, it was ok but isnt quite what i wanted
― johnny crunch, Sunday, 24 May 2020 20:06 (three years ago) link
nothing comes to mind at the moment, although i have a memoir around somewhere by a rare book collector. think it was published in the '70s. i'll post here if i can dig it up.
you might be interested in "dark back of time" by javier marías, which is about a lot of things but antiquarian bookshops / rare (sometimes but not always fake) book searching + collecting plays a major role and it's a very swell read imo.
― budo jeru, Sunday, 24 May 2020 22:14 (three years ago) link
thx both sound interesting
― johnny crunch, Monday, 25 May 2020 15:15 (three years ago) link
My husband ordered me a copy of Hitchcock's Films Revisited by Robin Wood for my birthday from Amazon Marketplace about six weeks ago now and got a message on his account last week that it "may be lost." First time I've ever had bad experiences with any of these things (I usually go with ABE myself, but Marketplace has never been a problem for me before). Wondering how much longer I should give it before I declare it "definitely lost."
― A White, White Gay (cryptosicko), Monday, 25 May 2020 17:24 (three years ago) link
A Pound of Paper by John Baxter is pretty good but UK-focussed, iirc
― fetter, Monday, 25 May 2020 17:28 (three years ago) link
i really enjoyed the booksellers doc (https://booksellersdocumentary.com) now on prime btw
― johnny crunch, Friday, 14 August 2020 22:48 (three years ago) link
ah ! thanks for sharing.
i love secondhand bookstores but christ, some of the more cranky antiquarian dudes, they're 1000x worse than the record guys
― budo jeru, Saturday, 15 August 2020 02:50 (three years ago) link
johnny crunch, i found this today while packing up some of my books:
https://www.champandmabel.com/assets/images/product/H12298_139b6dce2b0a84fd5f4186ec2331983e.jpgthe amenities of book collection — a. edward newton
― budo jeru, Thursday, 27 August 2020 21:05 (three years ago) link
book-collecting*
― budo jeru, Thursday, 27 August 2020 21:26 (three years ago) link
I immediately read the subtitle as And Kindred Afflictions
― anatol_merklich, Friday, 28 August 2020 08:45 (three years ago) link
cool man, nice book!
― johnny crunch, Friday, 28 August 2020 12:44 (three years ago) link
posted on the discogs thread because i didn’t know this one existed— i have a lot of book adventures . it’s truly the only thing i spend money on other than food, shelter, and climbing stuff. bought a book at a decent price from a seller on Abe, didn’t do much research into them but they had a good rating.i got sent the wrong book, the sort of thing that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, totally useless. i messaged them, they said sorry for mixup, they would get the right book to me. then they said getting the right book to me was impossible, but would i like something else from their inventory because a return hurts their rating. i said no.asked my bookseller pal about it— it’s a regular scam. a seller will list a book they don’t have, then attempt to buy it from another seller for cheap and make a tiny bit of profit. the issue is that sometimes these “booksellers” don’t keep up with pricing trends, so (as in my case) the book I ordered was being offered for 10-40 less than from other sellers. so because they couldn’t find a cheap copy to sell me, they sent me some trash, say it’s a mistake, then try to get you to choose something else from their “inventory” to keep their rating. insane and maddening.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 15 March 2024 00:09 (two weeks ago) link