Upside Down (see below) Now that my enthusiasm for books and the good life, coupled with my financial ineptness, has brought me to the point where the bankers own my houses, my cars, my books, and all my goods & chattels, there is only one thing, other than my soul, that the bankers do not […] More >>
Archives for April 2012
My Partners
Basement, 77 Langsford St. April 22, 2012 When I started this blog a couple of years ago, I aspired to absolute transparency. I was going to “tell it like it is.” The unvarnished truth about the book business! It only took me half a page to realize that, despite my lofty goal, this would not […] More >>
Field Day for the 1%
Exhausted after purchasing Big Books, the 1% engage in conversation A colleague approached me on the floor of the New York Book Fair and asked if I’d composed this week’s blog yet. I told him I had not. He kindly offered to write it for me himself. It’d be a snap, he said – first […] More >>
Ten Pound Archaeology
American Congress Authorizes Privateers (see below) Much to my surprise last week’s blog, “Auctioneers as Enemies of Archives,” elicited a strong response. I’d always thought of archives as collections of letters from whalemen, or the accumulated papers of a pioneering family, or some sailor’s assembled records and journals. Americana, in other words. But I received […] More >>
Auctioneers as Enemies of Archives
Poor Ole General Whitelocke (see below) Back in the 1930s Randolph G. Adams – bibliographer, historian, and first director of the Clements Library at the University of Michigan – wrote an amusing and controversial essay entitled “Librarians as Enemies of Books.” For the past few years I’ve been slowly coming to the realization that the […] More >>