A Factotum In The Book Trade

Author : Marius Kociejowski
Publisher : Biblioasis
ISBN 13 : 177196457X
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Factotum in the Book Trade written by Marius Kociejowski and published by Biblioasis. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bookshop is, and will always be, the soul of the trade. What happens there does not happen elsewhere. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show there than anywhere else, and I think it’s because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires. A memoir of a life in the antiquarian book trade, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey between the shelves—and then behind the counter, into the overstuffed basement, and up the spine-stacked attic stairs of your favourite neighbourhood bookshop. From his childhood in rural Ontario, where at the village jumble sale he bought poetry volumes for their pebbled-leather covers alone, to his all-but-accidental entrance into the trade in London and the career it turned into, poet and travel writer Marius Kociejowski recounts his life among the buyers, sellers, customers, and literary nobility—the characters, fictional and not—who populate these places we all love. Cataloging their passions and pleasures, oddities and obsessions, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey through their lives, and a story of the serendipities and collisions of fate, the mundane happenings and indelible encounters, the friendships, feuds, losses, and elations that characterize the business of books—and, inevitably, make up an unforgettable life.

Author : Charles Bukowski
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061842419
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Factotum written by Charles Bukowski and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next. Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.

Author : Gary Goodman
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452966915
Total Pages : 171 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Last Bookseller written by Gary Goodman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wry, unvarnished chronicle of a career in the rare book trade during its last Golden Age When Gary Goodman wandered into a run-down, used-book shop that was going out of business in East St. Paul in 1982, he had no idea the visit would change his life. He walked in as a psychiatric counselor and walked out as the store’s new owner. In The Last Bookseller Goodman describes his sometimes desperate, sometimes hilarious career as a used and rare book dealer in Minnesota—the early struggles, the travels to estate sales and book fairs, the remarkable finds, and the bibliophiles, forgers, book thieves, and book hoarders he met along the way. Here we meet the infamous St. Paul Book Bandit, Stephen Blumberg, who stole 24,000 rare books worth more than fifty million dollars; John Jenkins, the Texas rare book dealer who (probably) was murdered while standing in the middle of the Colorado River; and the eccentric Melvin McCosh, who filled his dilapidated Lake Minnetonka mansion with half a million books. In 1990, with a couple of partners, Goodman opened St. Croix Antiquarian Books in Stillwater, one of the Twin Cities region’s most venerable bookshops until it closed in 2017. This store became so successful and inspired so many other booksellers to move to town that Richard Booth, founder of the “book town” movement in Hay-on-Wye in Wales, declared Stillwater the First Book Town in North America. The internet changed the book business forever, and Goodman details how, after 2000, the internet made stores like his obsolete. In the 1990s, the Twin Cities had nearly fifty secondhand bookshops; today, there are fewer than ten. As both a memoir and a history of booksellers and book scouts, criminals and collectors, The Last Bookseller offers an ultimately poignant account of the used and rare book business during its final Golden Age.

Author : Marius Kociejowski
Publisher : Biblioasis
ISBN 13 : 1926845226
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Pigeon Wars of Damascus written by Marius Kociejowski and published by Biblioasis. This book was released on 2011-04-05 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marius Kociejowski follows up his now classic The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool with The Pigeon Wars of Damascus. A metaphysical journalist in search of echoes rather than analogies, hints as opposed to verities, Kociejowski discovers once again at the periphery of Damascene society—for the outcast is often made of the very thing that rejects him—a way to understand the challenges and changes refashioning post-9/11 Syria and the Middle East, reminding us once again of the deeper purpose of travel: to absorb and understand the spirit of a place, and to return changed.

Author : David M. Cornish
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1849920370
Total Pages : 722 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Factotum written by David M. Cornish and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rossamund has exchanged Winstermill and the dangerous life of a lamplighter for Brandenbrass and an even more dangerous life as factotum to the aristocratic monsterslayer, Europe. Fear and self-doubt must wait, however, as he plunges headlong into the fulgar's day-to-day life of political manoeuvring, high-society parties and well-paid monsterhunting. But whispers and rumours about her new factotum place Europe herself in danger, and now Rossamünd and the Branden Rose will face the ultimate battle against their enemies, the black-hearted schemers who would destroy them both.

Author : Mary Pollard
Publisher : OUP/The Bibliographical Society of London
ISBN 13 : 9780948170119
Total Pages : 730 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Dictionary of Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1550-1800 written by Mary Pollard and published by OUP/The Bibliographical Society of London. This book was released on 2000 with total page 730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dictionary attempts in nearly 2,200 entries to cover all workers in the various branches of the Dublin book trade until the Act of Union in 1800. All grades of workers from apprentice to master, and papermakers, engravers, hawkers and other peripheral traders are considered, as well as the all-important printers and booksellers. Entries naturally vary from one or two lines to one or two pages in length. The aim is to illustrate the working life of each subject by reference to contemporary sources such as records of the stationer's Guild, state papers, imprints, newspaper advertisements, customers' accounts, etc, with documentation for each statement made. Entries will thus give practical clues to dating undated books, as well as provide a basis for further research into individual traders' work and the Dublin trade as a whole. Some account of the history and organization of the Dublin Guild of St Luke (cutlers, painter-stainers, and stationers) appears as introduction.

Author : Rebecca Rego Barry
Publisher : Voyageur Press (MN)
ISBN 13 : 0760361576
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rare Books Uncovered written by Rebecca Rego Barry and published by Voyageur Press (MN). This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Discoveries of rare and collectible books are chronicled in stories from both casual and die-hard book collectors" --

Author : John Hruschka
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 027107227X
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Books Came to America written by John Hruschka and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who pays attention to the popular press knows that the new media will soon make books obsolete. But predicting the imminent demise of the book is nothing new. At the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, some critics predicted that the electro-mechanical phonograph would soon make books obsolete. Still, despite the challenges of a century and a half of new media, books remain popular, with Americans purchasing more than eight million books each day. In How Books Came to America, John Hruschka traces the development of the American book trade from the moment of European contact with the Americas, through the growth of regional book trades in the early English colonial cities, to the more or less unified national book trade that emerged after the American Civil War and flourished in the twentieth century. He examines the variety of technological, historical, cultural, political, and personal forces that shaped the American book trade, paying particular attention to the contributions of the German bookseller Frederick Leypoldt and his journal, Publishers Weekly. Unlike many studies of the book business, How Books Came to America is more concerned with business than it is with books. Its focus is on how books are manufactured and sold, rather than how they are written and read. It is, nevertheless, the story of the people who created and influenced the book business in the colonies and the United States. Famous names in the American book trade—Benjamin Franklin, Robert Hoe, the Harpers, Henry Holt, and Melvil Dewey—are joined by more obscure names like Joseph Glover, Conrad Beissel, and the aforementioned Frederick Leypoldt. Together, they made the American book trade the unique commercial institution it is today.

Author : R. A. Gekoski
Publisher : Da Capo Press
ISBN 13 : 9780786714520
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nabokov's Butterfly and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books written by R. A. Gekoski and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collector of rare books shares his personal experiences with twenty important volumes and other literary items, including a signed copy of Sylvia Plath's The Colossus, a copy of Nabokov's Lolita from Graham Greene, and the sale of J. R. R. Tolkien's college gown.

Author : Marius Kociejowski
Publisher : Biblioasis
ISBN 13 : 1927428785
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Pebble Chance written by Marius Kociejowski and published by Biblioasis. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Kociejowski draws on all these aspects of his life in these engaging, idiosyncratic personal essays ... [that] proffer the reader equal measures of autobiography, insight and quirky charm." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post In the game of bocce, no matter how intensely you study the world's surface, there is always a chance an unseen pebble will knock your ball in an unexpected direction. In these essays, poet, antiquarian bookseller, and celebrated travel writer Marius Kociejowski chronicles serendipitous encounters with authors, manuscripts, and eccentrics, in which “the curious workings of fate” and “art's unbidden swerve” intervene to shift the course of fortune. Carried by keen wit, aphoristic prose, and a rich sense of characterization, and featuring chance meetings and comic misadventures with such figures as Bruce Chatwin, Zbigniew Herbert, and Javier Marías, The Pebble Chance is a sumptuous offering of belles lettres exploring the incandescent moments when skill and providence collide.