Ten Pound Island Book Co.

Our Most Recent Catalog

Hope you all enjoyed your turkey! Sister-in-law Mary Jane Crotty made Thanksgiving dinner, as she does every year, but I got the carcass of the 20-pound bird, as I do every year, and soon the entire Crotty-Gibson clan will be sloshing around in turkey soup.

While I did spend a fair amount of time overeating and watching sports, I also managed to bang through another tranche of Gary Eckstine’s whaling/scrimshaw reference library – represented here in a selection of 51 titles. I happened to be talking to old friend and colleague Ed Lefkowicz the other day, and he reminded me that Gary, a mutual customer, was a condition freak. That’s why most of the books in the list are uncommonly well preserved. Nothing fancy, but plenty useful, and in eye-catching shape.

To order a book from this list, send an email to tenpound@tenpound.com stating the item number and ID number of the book(s) you wish to purchase. (We’re working on a shopping cart feature, but it ain’t here yet.) Our telephone system is back online, so we can take calls, but priority will be given to emails, which are time stamped, and provide “first come, first served” service. As with other low-end offerings, postage will apply to domestic shipments as follows: $5 for the first book, $3.50 for each additional. Overseas and bulk orders will be shipped at cost.

Bookman’s Log

A weekly blog of news, gossip, recent adventures and acquisitions, and deep thinking about the antiquarian book trade

As attested by my several brushes with bankruptcy, I am not a particularly quick study when it comes to finance and economics. This troubled me early in my career, when it seemed possible that any novice bookseller could become Bill Reese simply by wor … More >>