Bookshopping

Thanks to the strong recommendation of Citizen Reader, I picked up the Bookshopper over the weekend. The author, Murray Browne, has lived a life of books, as a reader, a book reviewer and most important to this book, as a person who shops for books. If you are the sort of person who longs for a few spare hours to wander unrushed through a bookshop looking for just the thing, you will enjoy this book.

The book is discursive, hopping from topics like the unpleasant nature of bookstore owners, the books that indicate whether a store is worth perusing, giving used books as gifts, how to arrange books and how to dispose of them. The essays are short, so if you find your interest waning, you can skip ahead, as Browne even advises you to do in his preface (titled About the Author)

Throughout the book, he has little asides about favorite books and authors and how they have influenced him. He mentions one called Heroes in Blue and Gray, which he says isn't necessarily great, but was important in making books come alive for him. I have a similar experience with An Album of Dinosaurs. You can see examples of the amazing pictures from the book at The Haunted Closet. This book enraptured me as a child and I was thrilled to see that my parents kept my copy allowing me to give it to my kids. Powells has a few copies, go get one!

I enjoyed this book as it made me think about my own relationship with books and I liked hearing about Browne's. There are some practical things, like the defense of giving used books as well. I am perfectly happy to get a used book as a gift, if it is well chosen, but I fear looking like a cheapskate if I give one. Browne helped talk me through that.