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Heldfond Book Gallery, Ltd., San Anselmo, CA has finally exposed the underbelly of bookselling and sleeze. They are generating faux bookcovers as 8″x10″ posters, just the right size to hang over your desk – with the obligatory – not for sale label on it. I can’t decide which one describes me best. Any thoughts?
birthday boy • 1763 - Samuel Rogers, English author (d. 1855)
birthday girl • 1818 – Emily Brontë, English novelist (d. 1848)
audio •
NPR discusses how Russian Mathematician Grigori Perelman may have solved the 100-year-old math problem known as Poincare’s Conjecture, one of the 7 millenium problems.ABNJ – Antiquarian Booksellers of New Jersey (NJ)
CABA – Connecticut Antiquarian Booksellers Association (CN)
CVABA – Central Valley Antiquarian Booksellers Association (CA)
FABA – Florida Antiquarian Booksellers Association (FL)
GABA – Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association (GA)
ABA - The Antiquarian Booksellers Association (UK)
ABAA – Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (US)
ABAC - The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada (CAN)
ANZAAB – Australian & New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (AUS & NZ)
SBASA – Secondhand Booksellers Association Of South Australia (SA)
ABF - Danish Antiquarian Booksellers Association (DK)
VEBUKU - Swiss Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (CH)
SLAM - Syndicat National de la Librairie Ancienne at Moderne (FR)
VDA EV - German Antiquarian Booksellers Association (DE)
Antiquarian Booksellers Association Of Japan (JP)
ILAI – Association Booksellers Antiquarians of Italy (IT)
CLAM - Belgian Professional Chamber of Antiquarian and Modern Booksellers (BE)
NVvA - Dutch Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (NL)
SAY - Finnish Antiquarian Booksellers Association (FN)
SVAF - Swedish Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (SE)
NAF – Norwegian Antiquarian Booksellers Association (NO)
other
TomFolio – TomFolio Booksellers co-op
Antiquarian Book Dealers Of Indiana (IN)
in progress . . . .
Okay so I took yesterday off for a little road trip. Rebekah Bartlett from Coelacanth Books and I took in a book auction up in the wilds of New Hampshire. (why are auction houses ALWAYS hell and gone from civilization?) Here’s a few thumbs I cobbled together -
BRING MAPS - Buy new ones at least once a decade – mine tend to find their way to the floor of the truck and then acquire decoratively placed muddy boot prints. Regardless of how many I have, I always end up with 3 of one state and only half of another. I hate it when I drive off a map and onto a new one I don’t have.
I like to make small marks on the maps with MM/YY when I find an out of the way goodie, like an off the grid bookshop or good place to eat. I even scrawl radio station info, so I don’t have to spend ages scanning the dial. If this bugs you get a seperate set of maps for notations.
BRING A DIRECTORY – the regions Book Association Dealer directory – ALMOST everywhere has an association of old bookies and any org worth their salt has a directory with a map. When you see them grab FOUR – one goes in the car, one goes on your desk, one gets lent to someone else and one gets lost. You can always visit an association site and print out stuff before you go. Also bring any directories of Antique Malls or thrift stores. You may not plan your trip around them, but if you are off on a stretch between bookstores you may do some exploring. I found a antiuqe mall booth with 50% decent books yesterday cause I was killing time waiting for the auction to start.
BRING YOUR CAMERA – it’s not just for travel snaps anymore. With the no cost of digital photos, I take pictures of things I want to remember instead of writing them down. A signpost, a store front, a restaurant, even a meal or a book. A phone with a camera is a terrific toy for surreptitiously shooting a book in a store.
BRING YOUR OWN BOX and/or bags - I hate it when I buy an expensive book and they put it in a grocery bag or if I buy several and all they have is a banana box with no decent bottom. I save them money and me aggravation, by putting them directly into my own box or bag with handles. You can tear up whatever they gave you and use it to keep them from sliding around.
BRING A TO-GO BAG – my glove box is already full of garage receipts, flashlights, wd-40 and whatnot. So, I keep a canvas bookbag hanging on the chair by the door – with maps, directories, pens, notebook etc . . . It all comes back it the house on top of the box of books. If anything it is a place to put the days receipts and flyers.
HAVE A FLEXIBLE DESTINATION - I learned this doing photography, find a destination point. It doesn’t even HAVE to be a bookstore. You may stop many times before you get there you may even change your trip and NOT get there. But when you have one, you can always swing your compass back to it when you are stuck for a decision.
TAKE THINGS - flyers, anouncements, free mags – the flyers and annoucement cards can lead you to a store or a sale you didn’t know about and may help you plan your next trip. And the free mags are good for packing material after read them or decide your aren’t going to read them.
FOLLOW YOUR NOSE - if you see someplace curious STOP – the odds are good you won’t remember it the next time you go back there. You never know what you will find. There are ENDLESS tales of booksellers stopping unplanned at a thrift store and finding a gem.
USE THE FACILITIES – remember when your mother told you to go before you go? booksellers you don’t know personally may not have a public restroom. Use the ones in the fast food joints, like Mickey D’s, BK adn Dunkins – you DON’T HAVE to eat there – trust me it’s okay – they really don’t care.
STOP AND EAT – 
regardless of whether you are just starting out or writing off the whole trip. TAKE time to stop and eat. It will at least give you a chance to make notes, check your time and map and make your next decision. If you are on a strict book only budget – bring food and drink in a small cooler with ice and don’t bring crappy road food, bring a treat – something nice you don’t normally make and stop at those odd side road monuments, that’s what they put them there for! I once made my own lobster rolls and ice tea and was eating by a babbling brook off a side road in Warren, New Hampshire when a deer walked right past me – I kid you not! If you have a more flexible allowance – stop someplace that LOOKS interesting – not a chain. Either the food will be great or just as mediocre as fast food kind – either way it is better than eating in your car.
TAKE A LOAD OFF - If you aren’t driving your own vehicle or are somewhere you had to fly to get to think about shipping. If you are visiting a bookseller you know collect up your hoard and ship it home ahead of you from their place. (I did that from California and was sooo glad I did) It may be pricey to stop and ship from a ‘shipping’ store – but depending on the weight of your books, their value and your chiropractic bills it may be worth it. If you are worried about your new acquires, ship your clothes home and put your books in your luggage*. I like to bring empty soft suitcases stuffed inside each other JUST to fill with books.
KEEP AN OPEN MIND – Don’t clutter your head with a search for just the stuff you WANT to find – you will blind yourself to stuff you didn’t know you were looking for. So? you find a few non-book things that you can eBay, or you find some decent books that AREN’T your specialty you can resell to another dealer.
“Never THINK you are going to find anything when you look, just look, with an open mind. Most people CANNOT DO THIS, what with their egos getting in the way, etc. I mean it. One of the absolute hardest things to do is NEVER THINK YOU WILL HIT THE LICK, just have an interest in things and OBSERVE, trying to LEARN SOMETHING. There is a certain chemistry involved with luck, I believe, and, if one does not lay the groundwork for the luck, ie; do the open mind thing and don’t let GREED enter in to your preparation, you can pick up every book in sight for the next million years and all you will be doing is “lifting.” * in from Ed Smith Books
TAKE SOME CHANCES - Blind buy stuff. Most booksellers DON’T live and die by ScoutPal, we use our head and instincts. We buy stuff, we research it and we file that knowledge away so that we can make better guesses the next time. What you learn by merely researching a book can usually outweigh the cost of the book. You are honing your knowledge and over the years you make fewer and fewer ‘bad’ buys. One of the first things a bookseller ever told me is that “You never regret the books you buy as much as the ones you don’t” You HAVE to take some risks, because THOSE are the lessons you remember.
birthday boys •
1869 – Booth Tarkington (d.1946) American novelist and dramatist
1878 – Don Marquis (d.1937) American newspaperman, poet, and playwright
1905 - Stanley Kunitz, American poet (d. 2006)
1918 - Edwin O’Connor, American novelist and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (d. 1968)
worth reading • The Guardian Pays tribute to Julian Maclaren-Ross, the model for X Trapnel in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, who died of a heart attack brought on by drink and drugs in 1964. A literary dandy whose contemporaries and admirers included Cyril Connolly, Graham Greene, John Betjeman and Evelyn Waugh, Maclaren-Ross was the laureate of London’s post-war literary demi-monde.
tentacle boy • Amazon.com is making its first foray into the movie business after picking up the film rights for Keith Donohue’s fantasy novel The Stolen Child.
lost & found • Virginia man finds 188 year old Bible in dump bin see what happens when you recycle?
naughty naughty • Norman Buckley, faces jail after he admitted stealing some of the treasures of Manchester Central Library where he worked and putting them up for sale on the internet.
obit worth reading • Fantasy novelist David Gemmell at 57, best known for stories such as Legend and Waylander.
unnews • there is ACTUALLY an AP Wire story about how the DaVinci Code fad is finally fading. I kid you not – because sales and interest are on the wane, someone PAID someone to write 476 words on how the DaVinci Code is NOT news anymore. Sheee-it, I want a job like that.
ziplock fresh • regarding the book found in an Irish Bog, Slate.com’s Explainer explains how bogs keep things fresh.
something new • review of Richard Kurin’s Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gem.
where the fuck do you shop for something like that?
and who’s bright idea was it to put it on the roof?
i felt so bad for this little guy….. apparently he’s a blonde chincilla.
from Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminologychain lines ( chain marks ) n.
The widely spaced watermark lines, about 25 mm apart, parallel to the shorter sides of a sheet of laid paper, caused by the “chain wires,” i.e., the wires to which the finer laid wires of the MOLD (1) are attached for support.
For those of you who don’t keep up with such things, there was a bit of a media brouhaha recently when ersatz movie critic Joel Siegel got up and walked out of the preview somewhere in the 2nd reel. And not only did he walk out but he stood up in a theater filled with other reviewers and made a proclimation that he was walking out and why. Apparently he was offended by references to a sex act with a donkey obviously he’s never seen Tom Hank’s Bachelor Party (1984) And don’t get me wrong, this movie has something to offend EVERYONE, as a matter of fact if something in the film doesn’t offend you are probably defective in some manner. It is constructed of some of the raunchiest, dirtiest humor since last years ‘the Aristocrat’s’ documentary/mockumentary, which apparently
Mr siegel didn’t see either. But it IS funny and literate and probably has the best script of any filmed released this year.
If you haven’t seen Clerks 1 from 1994, you probably should, cause Clerks II is Clerks 1 on pcp laced steriods. Anyway to get back to my story, Kevin Smith the writer/director/editor/star went on the offensive about Mr Siegels bad behavior. It is accepted that Mr Siegel has the right to shred Mr Smith’s film in print, but he is PAID to WATCH MOVIES, so walking out is arbitrary but making a show of it and drawing attention to himself WHILE STILL IN THE THEATER is totally childish and unprofessional.
Not only is the internet afire with blogging about this tantrum, but a radio show called Opie and Andy had Kevin Smith as a guest and CALLED Mr Siegel on the phone – Mr Siegel went on unapologetically for about 30 minutes justifying his childish antics, oblivious to the fact that he was ACTUALLY TALKING TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE FILM. Apprently Joel Siegel is off his meds, gone round the bend or completely forgotten that he is a CRITIC NOT A DIVA.
Long story short – it is so rare that a movie makes me laugh so hard soda comes out my nose, this one did. If you aren’t easily offended by chracters talking about things that I can’t even print here – you may like this.
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