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| It goes without saying that I am enamored with
books. Some years ago - I believe it was after I started working at Parsons - I encountered an intriguing set of books at The Cellar Door, a local consignment shop: The Library of Original Sources, a ten-volume set published early in the twentieth century. The Library is composed of translations of selected documents of historical significance; the kind of stuff you have heard about but have never read. The Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, and the writings Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, and Newton. I think I paid $60; maybe $75. A little while later I found another set: Messages and Papers of the President. This twenty volume set contains all the public papers of the presidents from Washington through Wilson. I watched Ken Burns' PBS series on the Civil War with the "Lincoln" volume in my lap; reading the full text of the letters to and from Lincoln's generals that Burns quoted from. I think I paid about $100-$125 for this set. I've seen it for as much as $200. This got crazy for a while. I picked up lots of old books. Several US history books written in the 19th century; a set of Daniel Webster's collected works; several Bibles in various translations; collections of poems by Poe and Tennyson; Homer's Iliad printed in the late 19th century; and more. I eventually settled in on buying selected books of significance - especially autographed first editions. This slowed me down right away. Since then I've picked up a four-volume, first-edition set of Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln and a few titles of lesser value. While they may not be valuable in dollars, they're significant to me (not all are first editions; all are autographed):
And there's more. The point is, once you get into building a library of books it's hard to stop. Such was the case with Larry and Nancy Goldstone. Their book, Used and Rare, is the story of their saga from the innocent acquisition of one "used" book to attending book fairs, re-arranging family vacations around the best used book shops, and finally attending New York rare book auctions. The book starts well, develops slowly, and finishes big. You sense the Goldstone's exhilaration over their first purchases, their embarrassment as they attempt to pick up the lingo and learn the lessons of book collecting, and their growing maturity as they fall into, then out of, the trap of buying what other people think is valuable instead of what they themselves value. You sense their frustration as they are stymied by public librarians who won't let them near rare books which are of less value than books they've casually handled in a book shop earlier in the day. Anyone who loves books or who has ever ventured into a hobby far enough to be excited by it but not far enough to ever be good at it will enjoy this book. |
Used and Rare: Travels in
the Book World
