Nicholas A. BasbanesRezensionen

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Summary: A celebration of those who compiled book lists and made recommendations, the impact of books on various individuals, and the reading lives of famous individuals.

For bibliophiles, Nicholas A. Basbanes is a godsend. He has published at least five books about books and those who are dedicated readers and collectors. I’ve previously reviewed A Gentle Madness, Basbanes celebration of book collectors. This, I believe has a wider appeal. The premise of this work is to explore the impact books have had on their readers and he takes us on a fascinating tour of the lives and libraries of the famous.

He begins with the history of those who recommend books and it was delightful to find that Bob on Books follows a long and honorable tradition. We learn of the great popularity of May Lamberton Becker and her “Readers Guide” columns of the late 1800’s, spanning a wide array of interests. Most delightful is the story of a rural reader with limited access to books asking for books that “had made her [Becker] sit up at night” that she could order by mail order. Becker sent her a package of books that arrived after she’d had surgery for a terminal condition. She wrote back, “With books I slip out of my life and am with the choicest company.”

Basbanes discusses the various attempts to compile lists of “greatest books,” a literary canon, including the efforts of Anita Silvey, who has read over 125,000 children’s books and compiled a list of 100 best books for children. We learn of the efforts of the Lilly Library to identify and collect the books people will be reading in 300 years.

Much of the book is concerned with famous readers and how they interacted with their books. We learn of “the silent witneeses,” the notes Henry James jotted in his books. Basbanes goes on with this theme in a whole chapter on “Marginalia,” the notes readers jot in the margins of their books–a horror to librarians and a trove of information for those studying the history of reading.

We’re introduced to David McCullough, an ardent reader who tells the story of Nathaniel Greene and Henry Knox, brilliant Revolutionary war leaders who learned strategy and tactics from books! We learn how Lincoln, Adams, and others carried books with them wherever they went. Basbanes traces the artistry of translators. He chronicles the biblical scholarship of Elaine Pagels. He introduces us to the child psychologist Robert Coles, a former literature major who came to recognize the power of stories for children and the rest of us. We meet Daniel Aaron, the man responsible for my bookcase full of Library of America volumes, doing for American writers what other series have done for Europeans. We visit the libraries of Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, inventors nourished by their reading.

The book concludes by featuring the Changing Lives Through Literature program, and the transformative influence books have had on the lives of the imprisoned. (Sadly, access to literature for prisoners is being curbed in many states.) What Basbanes does throughout is explore the significance of books on our lives. Reading him both confirms my own deep sense of the value of reading and inspires me to grow as a reader, to truly attend to what I read.

Yet another fascinating account of the world of books and ideas from Nicholas Basbanes, who has become, by any objective standard, the leading chronicler of print culture. Very highly recommended.

Because I am a bibliophile interested in books as cultural objects per se, as well as sources of edification, I really cannot say enough good things about this book, as well as the two the precede it, A Gentle Madness and Patience and Fortitude. Nicholas Basbanes is hands down the best contemporary writer of books on books I have encountered (if you look at my "Books on Books" shelf, you'll see I read a a fair amount of this stuff), and this is among his best work. Very highly recommended.

Compared to Kurlansky's book about paper, which I also read this year, this book is a bit harder to read. It has a central theme, paper, but each chapter reads more like a separate essay or article and some of the topics are not as paper related as others. Still, each chapter was interesting, even the ones that were a bit more rambling. And, for paper enthusiasts this would be a fun read, with lots of random trivia on all sorts of tangentially related subjects, as well as about paper.

I liked the content of this book, but the way the information is presented is very poor. The author jumps from discussions of one institution or person to another with little more than a double-space to let you know a change in course is taking place. It felt disjointed and abrupt, and did not make for a pleasurable reading experience. The topics that the author covered were interesting, and the sections on book collectors and sellers were particularly fun. Given that the material was good, I wish that the author had done a better job of presenting it to the reader.

I love books. I really do. And I love bookstores and libraries and book people in general. So, it makes sense that I would love this book.

Nicholas Basbanes also wrote A Gentle Madness, a book I stumbled upon in my public library a few years ago and fell in love with. So, I picked this one up and read it with glee. It’s over 20 years old and reading it for me was like a trip to my professional past as a librarian. The arguments librarians, their administrators, and the public had decades ago brought back so much angst for me.

I’m happy to say that some of these questions have been settled, sort of. Back then, some people saw the future of libraries in digital materials. They were ready to turn print lose to perish or thrive entirely in the wild. However, most people now realize that the demand for print books isn’t going away soon.

But libraries aren’t the only thing Basbanes discusses in this book. He talks about the people who collect rare books and the people who sell them. I don’t live with the kind of money he’s talking about, so I don’t keep up with the rare book market. But that doesn’t mean I don’t find it captivating as any self-respecting bibliophile would.

I admit to gushing a bit in this review. While reading about all these private, academic, and extensive public book collections was like a fairytale for me. It felt like reading Victoria magazine as a newlywed, setting up housekeeping, and dreaming of the possibilities. While I’ll never have room to store 50,000 volumes in my house, Basbanes has me dreaming of how that would look. And that’s almost as good as actually having it.

"Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book Hunter in the 21st Century" è un libro scritto da Nicholas Basbanes, un noto autore e giornalista che ha scritto molto sui libri e sulla cultura del collezionismo librario. Il libro è una guida per i cacciatori di libri, che offre strategie e prospettive per trovare e acquisire libri rari e preziosi nel 21° secolo.

Basbanes copre una vasta gamma di argomenti nel libro, tra cui la storia del collezionismo di libri, i diversi tipi di collezionisti di libri e le loro motivazioni, il ruolo della tecnologia nel collezionismo di libri e l'importanza di preservare e prendersi cura dei libri rari. Fornisce anche consigli pratici su come trovare e acquistare libri, inclusi suggerimenti su come cercare libri online, come valutare le condizioni e il valore di un libro e come negoziare con i venditori.

In tutto il libro, Basbanes sottolinea l'importanza di rimanere curiosi e di mentalità aperta nella ricerca dei libri e incoraggia i lettori a seguire le proprie passioni e interessi durante il collezionismo. Incoraggia inoltre i collezionisti di libri a essere consapevoli delle questioni etiche e legali che possono sorgere nel mondo del collezionismo di libri e ad essere rispettosi dei diritti di proprietà intellettuale di autori ed editori.

Nel complesso, "Among the Gently Mad" è una guida completa e istruttiva per chiunque sia interessato al collezionismo di libri e offre preziosi spunti e consigli a chiunque desideri iniziare o espandere la propria collezione.

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"Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book Hunter in the 21st Century" is a book written by Nicholas Basbanes, a well-known author and journalist who has written extensively about books and the culture of book collecting. The book is a guide for book hunters, offering strategies and perspectives for finding and acquiring rare and valuable books in the 21st century.

Basbanes covers a wide range of topics in the book, including the history of book collecting, the different types of book collectors and their motivations, the role of technology in book collecting, and the importance of preserving and caring for rare books. He also provides practical advice on how to find and acquire books, including tips on how to search for books online, how to evaluate a book's condition and value, and how to negotiate with sellers.

Throughout the book, Basbanes emphasizes the importance of staying curious and open-minded in the pursuit of books, and encourages readers to follow their passions and interests when collecting. He also encourages book collectors to be mindful of the ethical and legal issues that can arise in the book collecting world, and to be respectful of the intellectual property rights of authors and publishers.

Overall, "Among the Gently Mad" is a comprehensive and informative guide for anyone interested in book collecting, and offers valuable insights and advice for anyone looking to start or expand their collection.

An absolutely delightful book, the first in a trilogy written by Nicholas Basbanes, for those of us who cannot get enough of books about books!½

I felt impatient about the introduction and the first chapter, but once Basbanes really gets going talking about the history of papermaking, I was hooked. I have to admit that I don't get as jazzed about currency or bureaucracy as some of the later chapters demand, but on the whole a very engaging history with bits I loved to pieces.

Not as good as Basbanes's A Gentle Madness or Patience and Fortitude, but a bit more of a personal memoir on book collecting with some history thrown in. He does this in ten short chapters and an informative appendix. Published in 2002, there are some spots that are dated. The novelty of the internet and eBay, for instance. How many of the booksellers he speaks to shy away from the internet: they're probably all out of business, dead, or ON the internet now. Book prices on CDrom, putting your books in a searchable file on your PC word processor, etc. And, no images. All of Basbanes's books should be released in lush illustrated editions, like some of Bill Bryson's books. But, no images here and no index either. Still, a fun appetizer of a book, even for those of us lean on funds and whose "collections" tend more toward information, interests, and utility, instead of "rarity," expense, and investment.

Summary: An entertaining journey through the history and contemporary world of book collecting, and the “bibliomanes” whose passion for books formed amazing collections.

I think it is obvious that I love books. More precisely, I love reading books and talking about them. I do have a number of books in my home (and have donated or sold large numbers). I am a bibliophile, but not a bibliomane. This is the “gentle madness” Nicholas Basbanes writes about in this thick, delightful book you just don’t want to end because of the interesting stories of bibliomanes. The title comes from a description of Isaiah Thomas as being stricken with “the gentlest of infirmities, bibliomania.”

The most interesting difference between bibliophiles and bibliomanes, is that the former love reading books, while the latter collect them. The collectors usually have some focus in their collecting, from first editions of great books, to everything coming from the hand of a particular author or set of authors. I love finding books at the lowest price. Collectors pay attention to price but will spare no expense for something they want. At the very beginning, we meet a chef and restaurateur, Louis Szathmary, whose collection of cookbooks and artifacts filled sixteen semi-trailers and went to half a dozen institutions. And this is the fascinating part of the story. So often the collecting efforts of individuals accomplished what great libraries could not–forming distinctive collections that eventually enhanced these libraries’ holdings, whether Samuel Pepys, whose holdings went to Cambridge, John Harvard’s library that formed the core of the university named after him or the Huntington Library formed out of the personal collection of Henry Huntington. For that matter, Thomas Jefferson’s substantial library became the core of the Library of Congress.

Basbanes takes us through the fascinating world of booksellers, agents of buyers, and auctions of rare books. We are introduced to the high priced world of incunabula, early printed books, usually those printed before 1501. He describes a sale of Shakespeare’s First Folio, a collection of 36 plays for $2.1 million in 1989 (recently Christie’s auctioned a copy for $10 million). We learn of Ruth Baldwin who collected children’s books, eventually installing this collection at the University of Florida. Then there is Harry Hunt Ransom, who became the driving force behind the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas. Ransom cozied up to Texas politicos awash in funds from the Texas oil industry.

One of the unavoidable realities of collecting was the death (or sometimes the insolvency) of the collector. The efforts and funds to build up a collection then required the organizing, curating, and protecting of these rare resources. Inevitably, the question arises of the disposition of the collection. We learn both about auctions that form the inheritance of future generations, and the intentional donation or sale of libraries to other institutions. In some cases, the donor came along with the library during their life as did Ruth Baldwin who oversaw the installation of her children’s books and continued to curate the collection until shortly before her death.

Perhaps the strangest story is that of the collector who stole rather than bought his collection. Stephen Carrie Blumberg amassed a collection of Americana in his home in Ottumwa, Iowa valued at roughly $20 million. It consisted of stolen materials from libraries from all over the country. His thefts involved everything from stolen or duplicated keys to crawling through ventilation systems. Eventually he was caught. Basbanes interviewed him during his trial, during which he recounted his drive to build “his” collection and how he obtained it.

This book has become something of a “classic” among book lovers. If nothing else, it is comfort to most of us who may be berated for how many books we have. If nothing else, we can point to people even more eccentric than we are. They are each uniquely eccentric, yet also incredibly focused to assemble their collections. We learn about this gentle madness that has existed as long as there were books, and even become acquainted with some through the author’s travels and discussions with them. And since this book is out of print (though listed on Amazon and other sites), you can have a taste of the fun of collecting in finding a copy. If you love books about books and those who collect them, this is a treasure trove for your own collection.

I found this book interesting but hard to come back to. I could see it more as a college student's research source than what my 2015 self attempted to use as entertainment during his first year of bachelor's degree life. Both Nicholas and Mark Kurlansky's "Paper" are quite long, for paper is apparently older than several well known countries and even empires. I may give it a re-read now that I am done with school. Perhaps it would behoove me to try this tome as an audio book.

I had high hopes for this book. After all, the origins, making, uses and history of paper should be extremely interesting? Not this book. This book is disjointed and jumps around from topic to topic, most of which are only vaguely related to paper. It is a combination of travelogue, lengthy interviews, biographies, paragraphs of credentials, random facts, selective historical anecdotes, excessive (irrelevant in my opinion) historical detail about the people and places that have had something to do with the making, manufacturing, researching, storing, repairing, collecting, selling, buying, or using paper.

However, even after ploughing though all this detail, the book somehow fails to get to the core of paper - more in-depth paper making processes, the science, physical properties and technology of paper and paper making would have been nice. The author appears to be more interested in the idea of paper, not the paper itself.

All in all, I found the book to be rather tedious, with the occasional interesting bits.

I picked this up on a whim at the Harvard Book Store sometime early last spring when I was feeling like I wasn't reading enough grown-up books. I read the first half and really enjoyed it, but then got distracted by some other book that needed to be read. I picked it up again when I needed something to read while I waited for the next group of requests from the library. I picked up where I left off a year ago, and slipped right back into it.

I particularly enjoyed the first few chapters, which discussed some of the earliest known literature and how our relationship to it changes over time. I made a lot of notes in the margins about the correlations to my own ideas about the cultural history of fairy tales.

This book made me even more aware of the gaping holes in my knowledge of literature. I wasn't an English major in college because I didn't want to have to read all those Dead White Males (and after reading chapter 10, I have a better understanding of where that came from), but now I realize how much I've missed out on. Of course, it would take most of a lifetime to get caught up, but I may have to try to tackle one each summer, or something like that.

I was really, genuinely sad when I reached the last chapter, and I wanted to immediately start it over again. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in cultural studies or the history of literature.

Some really interesting history here.

Ogni uomo è un libro. Ma i libri non sono mai troppi. Una storia infinita. Nasciamo lettori, ci crediamo scrittori, diventiamo bibliofili, finiamo bibliomani. Il nostro destino è scrivere il libro della nostra vita e così diventiamo i romanzieri di noi stessi. Veri scrittori o plagiari, scriviamo per capire quello che pensiamo e pensiamo di essere. Giorno dopo giorno riempiamo le pagine della nostra vita, scriviamo poesie, inventiamo storie, scriviamo commedie, su carta o in "bits & bytes". Non siamo mai stanchi di usare parole in cerca di amore e verità, gloria e bellezza, fama e destino. Più scriviamo, meno sappiamo su questa storia infinita ...

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"A Gentle Madness" is a book that delves into the world of book collecting, exploring the fascinating and often eccentric people who are passionate about acquiring and preserving books. The book is divided into several sections, each of which explores a different aspect of book collecting and bibliomania.

The first section of the book provides a historical overview of book collecting, tracing the roots of the hobby back to ancient times and exploring the ways in which book collecting has evolved over the centuries.

The second section of the book focuses on the personalities and motivations of book collectors, examining the various reasons why people become collectors and the different types of collectors that exist.

The third section of the book delves into the practical aspects of book collecting, including the ways in which collectors acquire and preserve their books, as well as the challenges and pitfalls that can arise in the process. The fourth section of the book explores the culture and community of book collecting, examining the various organizations and events that bring collectors together and the ways in which the hobby has developed its own unique subculture.

Throughout the book, Basbanes weaves together fascinating anecdotes and stories about book collectors past and present, from the legendary John Carter to the contemporary collector who travels the world in search of rare and exotic books. "A Gentle Madness" is a comprehensive and engaging exploration of a unique subculture that will appeal to anyone with an interest in books, history, or the human passions that drive us to collect and preserve the things we love.

Loved chapter 1, the history chapter.

This is a great book if you are just starting out book collection. A lot of helpful hints, places to check, and different website. He has has great stories to go along will it.

Another journalist's book piling thousands of factoids in the hope of getting a compelling story - but ending with just a big pile. (I stopped reading soon, it was harrowing.)

I feel unfair in saying this, but I was disappointed by this book for two reasons.

The title suggested to me that this would be more details on authors' creative processes. What I found was a collection of Basbanes' interviews with many authors and not really a focused work on how authors work.

The author's previous books have all been insightful and incisive looks at book publishing and collecting, so perhaps my expectations were set higher than they should be to evaluate a new book.

Still, this collection was an interesting read in small doses of 2-4 pages with each author. For me, the highlights of the book are Basbanes' interviews with A.S. Byatt, Louis L'Amour, Arthur Miller, and Neil Simon; I'm still unsure if I enjoyed the Alfred Kazin interview due to what I got out of it or if the interviewee simply came off as an argumentative grump.

This collection of articles from Basbane's columns in BIBLIO and FINE BOOKS & COLLECTIBLES and other sources is an okay read, but not as in depth or detailed as his previous 4 books. A good read for bibliophiles, but its constant referencing back to A GENTLE MADNESS (his 1st and best book) is slighly irritating after a while, as this book becomes more of a sales pitch for those who missed that book 15 years ago.

This is a lengthy, comprehensive, well-researched litany of just about every book auction, collection, and book fiend that ever existed. Personnally, I ate it up, but unless you are equally obsessed, a reader might find it a bit dry after a while. The distribution of so many book estates, book thefts, and book fights all start to sound the same. It makes you think we are a bunch of lunatics, of course the title does imply that. However, if you are studying certain collections, particularly desired books, histories or biographies of book people, whether sellers or collectors, you will probably find it here.

Not as interesting, to me, as Basbanes's A Gentle Madness, but a nice diversion. Where A Gentle Madness mainly chronicled individual bibliophiles, bibliomaniacs, and even bibliokleptomaniacs, this covers places sacred to the history of the book, tells of book sellers and their bookstores, and libraries and librarians. Though I found many bits to be interesting, I found several others that were boring. The reading dragged in places.½

Un gran llibre per aprendre una mica més de bibliologia. A great book to learn a little more about bibliology.