That’s Larry McMurty’s simple advice to booksellers from this profile. He continues:
Junk is a major problem, it tends to creep in. The taste of the bookseller is important. We sell only our kind of books, a general humanities selection, all in very good condition.”

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I apologize in advance for this tasteless spoof from Cracked. More or less NSFW.

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Hostage-taker demands:
$100,000 in cash, a getaway car and a copy of The Widow’s Son, a 1985 novel about secret societies in an 18th century Parisian prison.
From Time.

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In a box of books I bought the other week, I found one of the strangest little items I’ve encountered in quite a while. It’s a promotional booklet used by Johnson & Johnson to advertise their 1953 marketing program for drug stores and pharmacists.
And the flier stars…monkeys, apes, and other primates.
?!
As pharmacists.
!?!?
With […]

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Not really book related, but just great and hilarious pieces of writing…
Tom Waits Interviews Tom Waits:
Q: You’ve always enjoyed the connection between fashion and history…talk to us about that.
A: Ok let’s take the two piece bathing suit, produced in 1947 by a French fashion designer. The sight of the first woman in the minimal two […]

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I’ve never seen a bookplate that so prominently included a portrait of the owner before. The good (hirsute) doctor even stamped the title page of the book: “Private Library / O.V. Lawson M.D. / Seattle, Wash.” Guess he REALLY wanted people to know it was HIS book.
Found in THE NEW CENTURY READS BY […]

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Beautiful, unusual, and compelling book images: another blog that long-ago should have hit the blogroll. Now remedied.

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…But I certainly didn’t expect it to shorten my life.

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Well, he is:
John might look like a man possessed when he is watching football but, in reality, he is yet another Portsmouth curiosity. It is rather bewildering to find him going about his day job - he is an antiquarian book dealer in the pretty market town of Petersfield.
“People look at me and think I […]

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First, if you’re going to be in or around the Monterey area before June 1st, our spring sale is going on. 20% off almost everything in the shop (sorry, in-store sales only).
And in other news, fellow bookseller Michael Lieberman of Wessel and Lieberman has invited me to be a regular contributor on his blog, […]

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Today’s Globe and Mail has an even-handed review of the new Sony reader, discovering much to praise, but still finding the technology wanting:
Advancements in book technology include binding, glue and typography, an artistic/technical undertaking that computer manufacturers are just beginning to glimpse. Page and type sizes have subtleties most makers of digital counterparts have yet […]

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When “a large advance induces a good writer to extend a successful series beyond its natural span.”
From: 7 Reasons Why Scifi Book Series Outstay Their Welcomes.
[via]

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Friends, god-help-me, but I give you LOL Manuscripts!

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Alberto Manguel on his library:
My library is not a single beast but a composite of many others, a fantastic animal made up of the several libraries built and then abandoned, over and over again, throughout my life. I can’t remember a time in which I didn’t have a library of some sort. The present one […]

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A bit steep, but they’ll ship to the US.

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Edwards Books of Springfield, MA was at the center of one of my favorite bookselling memoirs: Suzanne Strempek Shea’s Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page-Turning Adventures From a Year in a Bookstore about her time working in the shop after battling breast cancer.
Sadly, the shop is closing.

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I’ve spent the past two days going through over 300 boxes of books that were part of an estate. I estimate I looked at over 7500 books. Now, here’s a question. How many books/boxes did I go home with? Take a minute. I’ll wait.
Ready? Have your number?
Answer: Five boxes. […]

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O.E.D.
sigh.

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Faux-R-2-manual-in-form-of-an-auto-repair-book t-shirt.
(Just click through…will make sense. Must….Not….Order….One….)

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Okay. I admit it. I have never actually read any of Ian Fleming’s Bond books. Don’t get me wrong - I love the movies (even the bad ones), but somehow I’ve just never gotten around to picking up any of the novels on which they’re based. For the hundredth anniversary of […]

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