Category: Bibliophilia
-
Seneca on Books and the Library at Alexandria
De Tranquillitate Animi, IX, 4 (tr. Basore): What is the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titles their owners can scarcely read through in a whole lifetime? The learner is not instructed, but burdened by the mass of them, and it is much better to surrender yourself to a few authors than to…
-
Withdrawn From Circulation
The very best books, or so it seems, are usually the ones that get withdrawn from circulation in local public libraries, while the trash remains on the shelves. The librarians' bad judgement, however, redounds to my benefit as I am able to purchase fine books for fifty cents a pop. A while back, the literary…
-
Twelve Theses on Libraries and Librarians
Enjoy. Hat Tip and Merry Christmas to Joel Hunter.
-
A Map of Bohemia
Originally published in 1896 by Gelett Burgess in The Lark, the following curiosity I found on the inside front cover of Albert Parry, Garretts and Pretenders: A History of Bohemianism in America, 1933, rev. 1960 with a new chapter "Enter Beatniks" by Henry T. Moore (New York: Dover Publications). The Book Gallery on Mesa Arizona's 1950s-reminiscent Main…
-
“Have You Read Them All?”
It is not unusual for a non-bookman, upon entering the book-lined domicile of a bookman, to crack, "Have you read them all?" The quip smacks of a veiled accusation of hypocrisy, the suggestion being that the bookman is making a false show of an erudition and well-readedness the likes of which he does not possess. I invariably reply,…
-
John Heidenry’s Zero at the Bone
There is serious reading and there is bed reading. Serious reading is for stretching the mind and improving the soul. It cannot be well done in bed but requires the alertness and seriousness provide by desk, hard chair, note-taking and coffee-drinking. It is a pleasure, but one stiffened with an alloy of discipline. Bed reading, however,…
-
If Everyone Were Like Me . . .
. . . there would be no used bookstores: I keep all my books. So it is a good thing for me that not everyone is like me.
-
Never Buy a Book You Haven’t Read
It's a good maxim. But I hear an objection coming. "If you've already read a book, why do you need to buy it?" Because the only books worth owning are the ones worth reading more than once.
-
‘He’s Only Reading’
This just over the transom from Londiniensis: Your last post puts me in mind of the hoary old story of the timid student hovering outside his tutor’s door not knowing whether to knock and disturb the great man. At that moment one of the college servants walks past: “Oh, it’s all right dear, you can…
-
Books and Reality and Books
I am as confirmed a bibliophile as I am a scribbler. But books and bookishness can appear in an unfavorable light. I may call myself a bibliophile, but others will say 'bookworm.' My mother, seeing me reading, more than once recommended that I go outside and do something. What the old lady didn't appreciate was…
-
Book Matters
Gypsy Scholar Horace Jeffery Hodges burrows deep into some borrowed Jackson. Holbrook Jackson would find this development, a bookless library, nauseating. (Via Joel Hunter) It is foolish for a school to discard its books in order to go entirely digital given the fragility of electronic media. More here. The Denver Bibliophile e-mailed me today asking me…
-
A Rare Find: The Anatomy of Bibliomania
One of the pleasures of the bookish life is the 'find,' the occasion on which, whilst browsing through a well-stocked used book store, one lights upon a volume which one would never discover in a commercial emporium devoted to the purveyance of contemporary schlock. One day, after a leisurely lunch, I walked into a book…
-
Abandoning Ambition, Let Us Repair to the Portico. . .
Thanks to open library stacks, I stumbled across the epigrams of Martial a while back. (Therein lies an argument for open stacks.) Marcus Valerius Martialis was so-named because he was born on March 1. He first saw the light of day circa A.D. 40 at Bilbilis in Hispania Tarraconensis. So far to me he seems…
-
Idiotic Marginalia From Marginal Idiots
Have you noticed that the same people who are morally obtuse enough to underline and annotate public library books tend to be the same people who are too intellectually obtuse to make good comments? If they are going to deface public property, they should at least have the decency to stun us with the brilliance…
-
Library Stacks: Open or Closed?
Some punk having badly defaced a book I was about to check out, I had the librarian make a note to that effect lest I be accused of the barbarism. I mentioned to the librarian that the widespread disrespect shown to public property is an argument against socialism. He responded that it is an argument…