There is a lot that I like about this book, but also a fair amount of disappointment. The treatment of the actual bookshops is often pretty superficiaThere is a lot that I like about this book, but also a fair amount of disappointment. The treatment of the actual bookshops is often pretty superficial. The book is mostly a stream of consciousness, random account of Ince's incidents of travel and book purchasing (often at bargain hunting in charity shops rather than the titular bookshops). There is a lot about books, but again much of it superficial, as Ince pulls in a wide and random range of authors and titles. A small and random selection: The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, Being and Time, Bollocks to Alton Towers, The Cat Who Saved Books, The Ghost Stories of M.R. James, Hangover Square, The Lord of the Rings, On Having No Head, Picturesque Finland, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, The Sirens of Titan. I found some books that I want to read, some that I want to avoid. Parts are a lot of fun, parts are pretty tedious. Perhaps I should have started off: "It was the best of books, it was the worst of books." I really wanted to like this more. 3½ stars....more
"I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing down to remember it now." A slogan you will find on the Field Notes home page. People forge"I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing down to remember it now." A slogan you will find on the Field Notes home page. People forget that writing helps them remember, even if they never look back at what they have written. On a piece of paper, with a pen or pencil. Not a computer, which helps us forget. No wonder the world is such a mess!
I like notebooks. I normally carry a Field Notes and a pen, for lists, random jottings, quotes and observations from what I am reading. I use A5 notebooks at my desk (preferably Midori or Clairfontaine), for common-place, journal, research projects (well, that one not so much anymore). Roland Allen's history of notebooks and their uses goes into all sorts of obscure nooks and crannies of cultural and intellectual history. Their early use as account books and artists' sketchbooks in the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance, common-place books, travel journals, ships' logs, diaries and many other things. He talks about famous examples, like Leonardo's notebooks. Perhaps the oddest is the Visboek from sixteenth-century Holland, complete with drawings of herring and other fishies. There is much on their importance for art, music, history, science. Allen is especially interested in their role in cognitive processes:
"By privately externalising his ideas he was able to question them, manipulate them, and hone the arguments that would turn a raw hypothesis into a well-substantiated, coherently argued theory. Darwin more than once explained the method in print, recommending that researchers 'ought to remember Bacon's aphorism, that Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.'"
He quotes Ryder Carroll:
"Then I realised that there's much more utility to a notebook than I first saw: I started using it to actually think."
Allen ends with a discussion of Clark and Chalmers' theory of "the extended mind:"
"So long as one trusts the information stored in the notebook, relies upon it, and uses it, there is - philosophically speaking - no difference between the notebook and the mind."
Allen provides all sorts of odd facts in the course of the book. The English police call box, famous from Doctor Who, was not for citizens to call the police but for the police to call in, so the sergeants could tell they were actually on the job and not hanging out in a pub. Police inspectors were not originally detectives: they inspected the beat cops notebooks to make sure they were actually making their rounds. Who knew? Just some of the interesting historical trivia Allen compiles.
There are parts of Allen I will probably return to occasionally, for other parts semel satis est....more
This is a very well researched book, with lots of references to archives and other primary sources. Not surprising for a book by a professional historThis is a very well researched book, with lots of references to archives and other primary sources. Not surprising for a book by a professional historian. More surprising is that it is readable and entertaining. Friss follows a roughly chronological arrangement and covers a small number of bookshops in depth, with some others noted in passing. He begins with Franklin in Philadelphia and next moves on to the Old Corner Bookstore/Ticknor and Fields in Boston, a major force in early nineteenth-century American literature. Then he moves to bookshops on wheels, department store bookshops (Marshall Field's), Bookshop Row (NYC), Gotham Book Mart (NYC), The Strand (NYC), a variety of theme-oriented bookshops (feminist, LGBTQ, radical, Black), street booksellers, Barnes & Noble, Amazon. He ends with Ann Patchett's indie bookshop, Parnassus, in Nashville.
This is very much an east coast book; it reminds one of the New Yorker map of the US. Most of the bookshops are in the northeast, mostly in NYC. I will grant the cultural and commercial significance of most of his picks, but he omits or scants a lot. City Lights in San Francisco, at least as significant as Gotham and the Strand, gets only a couple of mentions. Powell's (Portland) likewise. Border's also gets relatively little attention; the Borders in Ann Arbor, originally an indie, was a great bookshop and the chain was higher quality than most of the competition. Barnes & Noble may have been first, but it was never as good as Borders. Antiquarian and second-hand bookshops get relatively little attention. Friss also generally ignores specialty bookshops: mystery, scifi (e.g., Uncle Edgar's and Uncle Hugo's in Minneapolis), non-English language books (e.g., Schoenhof's in Cambridge) etc. But they are an important part of the bookshop scene.
This is a pretty good book and I learned a number of things that I hadn't known. But as a history of American bookshops, it is quite selective and spotty. Much is a paean to the indies (Friss is married to an indie bookseller). I like indies and buy a lot of books from them (most recently Moon Palace in Minneapolis). But I also buy from chains and Amazon. People forget that in the days before Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, most places were book deserts. And even if you had a good indie nearby, there was a lot that you could only get by special order and mail order. I only started buying from Amazon, when our really fine local indie was taken over by Books-a-Million (aka, the barbarians from Birmingham) and they told me to take my special orders to Amazon. Which I did, along with much of the rest of my business. When I was a college student, I had to open an account with Blackwells in Oxford to get Latin and Greek books by mail; nobody much in America stocks them (then and now).
Four stars and not three because I am uncomfortable dinging an author for not writing the book that I would have wanted him to write....more
I am probably not the target audience for this book. I have a doctorate in classical philology, studied papyrology, edited a few papyri, and know a coI am probably not the target audience for this book. I have a doctorate in classical philology, studied papyrology, edited a few papyri, and know a considerable amount about the subject. Vallejo is a lively writer and knowledgeable about the subject (I did learn a few things). Like most books on a recondite subject aimed at general readers, Vallejo generally gives one interpretation. I found myself frequently thinking, "but what about ...?" The notes are fairly minimalist; she often makes direct quotations without providing references; the bibliography is a mélange of solid scholarship, popular works, and sometimes irrelevant titles, sometimes omitting major, even fundamental works. This makes it hard both to ferret out the basis for some of her positions and to follow up. Vallejo talks about transitions of formats, primarily papyrus rolls to codex and printed books to e-books (not so much about ms to print), but seems unaware of Jim O'Donnell's Avatars of the Word. On Roman libraries, which she discusses at some length, there is no mention of George Houston's Inside Roman Libraries, nor of James Packer's fundamental The Forum of Trajan in Rome for the Bibliotheca Ulpia. Vallejo does have several good discussions of the epigrammatist Martial and books, not surprising since she wrote a doctoral dissertation on Martial.
The subtitle suggests a book about books in the ancient world. This is about half true; Vallejo spends a bit more than half of the book actually discussing books, libraries, bookshops, etc. in the Greco-Roman world. She spends a good deal of time on personal memoirs, books in the modern world, modern history, etc. Much of this is interesting, but not exactly what was advertised. Vallejo also spends a lot of effort looking for modern concerns (globalization, multiculturalism, etc.) in the ancient world. The ancients were fundamentally different from us in a lot of ways and these comparisons often ring false.
This is a very readable book, apart from a few infelicities inflicted by the translator (e.g., "papyruses"). It is often enjoyable, sometimes annoying, and not exactly what is advertised....more
It took a long time to find a copy of this little booklet (only 200 were printed). Sparrow, the olim Warden of All Souls and a great book collector ofIt took a long time to find a copy of this little booklet (only 200 were printed). Sparrow, the olim Warden of All Souls and a great book collector of his time, describes types of association copies: presentation copies, annotated copies, copies that supply otherwise unknown information about the author. Sparrow disdains the mere autograph; he wants there to be a genuine relationship between the author and the recipient. As always, he is both cranky and informative.
One category of association, of more importance to individual bibliophiles than to collectors, is omitted. This is personal association, frequently not documentable and of little importance to anyone else. As I sort my own library, I find a number of books associated with particular people and places in my life. One is Miroslav Marcovich's edition of Heraclitus (1967). When I arrived for my first day of grad school in 1979, Miro gave me a copy. I rarely read it, but I wouldn't part with it....more
I reread this because we have been downsizing our household collection (from ca 5,000 books to ca 1,200) and will be packing it up for moving at some I reread this because we have been downsizing our household collection (from ca 5,000 books to ca 1,200) and will be packing it up for moving at some point in the next year or so. Manguel offers a lot of reflections on books in his life at different times and places, nostalgia for libraries past, on the importance of books and reading, on dictionaries, etc. He has accumulated a vast amount of information from random reading (the best kind of education), so almost anyone will learn something new. But he doesn't offer a lot of practical help in deciding which books to keep and which to part with. ...more
I bought this book at the Barnes & Noble in Champaign IL in summer 2017, outbound on a summer roadtrip. I read it over the next few days; now almost fI bought this book at the Barnes & Noble in Champaign IL in summer 2017, outbound on a summer roadtrip. I read it over the next few days; now almost five years later, I am rereading it.
Carrión writes about bookshops all over the world, with a bit more weight to those of Latin America. He also digresses on publishing, reading, literature, travel. It is fun to compare notes on bookshops. Among those he writes about, I have fond memories of Blackwell's (Oxford), the Seminary Co-op (Chicago), City Lights and Green Apple Books (San Francisco), Cody's and Moe's (Berkeley; how did he miss Peter Howard's Serendipity Books?), the large Chapters in Toronto. He missed the great original Borders in Ann Arbor before it became part of the corporate Octopus and later vanished into oblivion. So many bookshops sliding into oblivion every year; two of my favorites in Philadelphia just recently joined them: Joseph Fox Books on Sansom Street and Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts.
Carrión also provides a number of acute observations and/or zingers:
"literary bookshops shape their discourse by creating a sophisticated taste that prefers difficulty"
"a book can be hunted down as much for its magical powers as its market value, and both factors often go together"
"A classic work is one that always offers a new reading. A classic author is one who never goes out of fashion." (more succinct and perhaps more useful that T.S. Eliot's definition)
"literature cannot be understood if one retains an anachronistic faith in borders" (Carrión might have added temporal as well as geographic)
"cultures cannot exist without memory, but need forgetfulness too."
Enough of this; time to visit a bookshop! A real one, not a virtual bazaar....more
Whenever two or three books are gathered, is it a library? Pettegree doesn’t really define what he means by a library; nothing about size, coherence, Whenever two or three books are gathered, is it a library? Pettegree doesn’t really define what he means by a library; nothing about size, coherence, or organization of the collection to separate a "library" from some random books. Purpose and audience generally come up only in relation to specific types of library, such as subscription, circulating and public libraries. Having clear criteria would have helped this book. Much of it veers off into history of books, book collecting, and publishing. All interesting but not really focused on libraries.
As with all comprehensive one-volume histories, The Library oscillates between being superficial and highly selective. Ancient libraries get scanted: the ancient near east, Greece, and Rome get about ten pages (by contrast Nazi book burning and stealing get twenty). Alexandria gets modest coverage, the library of the Attalids at Pergamum, chief rival to the Alexandrian library, is ignored. Much more could be said about personal collections (Cicero's letters are full of interesting bits). Similar observations can be made of coverage of the medieval period. Coverage expands greatly in the modern era, with much attention going to the 19th and 20th centuries. The great private libraries (Huntington, Morgan, etc.) get very cursory attention. National libraries do somewhat better. Again there are surprising omissions. The Vatican Library is largely ignored. The London Library, a major center of literary and cultural activity for almost two centuries, is only mentioned in passing. There is often excessive focus on numbers of buildings and books, as opposed to how knowledge is organized and used in libraries. In fact, there is almost nothing on organization and cataloging, major aspects of library history.
The final chapters are depressing. There is extended treatment of world wars and the Nazis, then of Cold War censorship on both sides. And finally the extended war on books by much of the library profession, in its ongoing identity crisis. Pettegree rightly castigates the Dowlin debacle at the San Francisco Public Library in the 90s, followed by the rush to digitize and discard in the 2000s. He concludes by noting "It is hard not to think that the health of the library will remain connected to the health of the book ... the sheer tangibility of the book is a key element of its success, and its versatility." Indeed, what is a library without physical books? Not a library and not a place that I want to be!
It is concerning that primary sources are quoted almost entirely from secondary sources. It raises doubts about first-hand knowledge and context. References to second-hand quotations also make it harder for readers to follow up the original. Other people's bibliographies are theirs, but a number of important works were missing: Jim O'Donnell's Avatars of the Word, Pfeiffer's History of Classical Scholarship, Borges, and Ortega y Gasset, etc., etc.
The Library is a readable book (when not going off into strings of numbers) and generally accurate. I learned some things. But it could have been better....more
The Last Bookseller is a lively account of the trade from the 1980s to 2017. Goodman is at his best portraying the characters of the second-hand book The Last Bookseller is a lively account of the trade from the 1980s to 2017. Goodman is at his best portraying the characters of the second-hand book business and providing historical vignettes of Minneapolis and Stillwater. Anyone who has spent many happy afternoons in antiquarian bookstores will enjoy this book. I have been to most of the Minneapolis and Stillwater bookshops that Goodman describes, including his; many pleasant memories. Online bookselling is a mixed blessing, but Goodman's bitterness about the effect of the Internet on bookselling goes over the top at times.
Kudos to the University of Minnesota Press for high production values and absence of typos, an increasingly rare phenomenon in publishing....more
As with Gentle Madness, this is a book that I read when it came out and have been rereading. It has a lot of engaging stories about book places and peAs with Gentle Madness, this is a book that I read when it came out and have been rereading. It has a lot of engaging stories about book places and people. Not least of its appeal is nostalgia. I remember visiting the chaotic Serendipity Books in Berkeley in the mid 90s and Basbanes' description is pretty much in line with my recollections. The section on libraries is less enjoyable, including the Ken Dowlin debacle in San Francisco and other examples of contemporary librarians' ongoing war on books and scholarship....more
This is an enjoyable book, with many anecdotes about eccentric collectors, notable books, and famous (and not so famous) libraries. I read it when it This is an enjoyable book, with many anecdotes about eccentric collectors, notable books, and famous (and not so famous) libraries. I read it when it first came out in the 90s, and some of the events (Blumberg, etc.) were fresher. Rereading it more than twenty years after, I find much still enjoyable, but too many lists, too great a focus on book prices, and too much namedropping (although nice to be reminded of some book people I also have met over the years). The proofreading could have been better; several Latin titles are botched. There are also some surprising errors of fact, e.g. confusing the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. ...more
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