Gary Goodman

I start so many books and finish so few, I was surprised to find myself posting this one. It must be Goodman’s wonderful and meandering storytelling.

This story is an excellent caution to anyone who’s ever dreamt of selling books for a living, especially used ones (Note to self: do not even think about it.) Bookselling is not for the faint to heart and those without obsessive determination. And then even the heyday has come and past.

From the epilogue:
“If the story has a villain, it is the internet. When the internet was small, booksellers fed it all their secrets. When it got big, it ate them up. This once human business is now dominated by the machines that have made it impossible for traditional secondhand stores to survive.”… (mehr)

Full of colorful and eccentric personalities, Gary Goodman captures the untold stories of the people who make up antiquarian book history with fun anecdotes from crazy bibliomaniacs (a.k.a. hoarders) whose children unfortunately think they are getting a great inheritance to the book thieves who steal thousands of dollars worth of precious books like a Bible from the 1500s from a university library. The most interesting parts of this book, to me, were when Goodman talked about his own bookstore. He walked into a used bookstore on a whim and the owner haggled him down to a price he couldn't refuse. So he went from working in a mental hospital with violent adolescents to owning a freezing used bookstore with a leaky roof and a broken heating system. The author muses, "working with people who wanted to kill you was not a viable long-term profession." The store he took over turned out to be more of a strip-mined pit than a gold mine. All the books were rescues on their way to the garbage bin. "There is no such thing as a free book," Godman says. “I had to rent several dumpsters and throw them away. Only stubbornness and a genuine love of books, kept me going,” writes Goodman. I enjoyed reading about how Goodman kept on keeping on while 70% of the used booksellers were going out of business and jobs like book hunting became obsolete during the rise of the internet age. Overall it was a pleasant read. There was one story Goodman told about the famous book thief Stephen Blumberg wandering into his store and leaving without even bothering to look around and see if he had any books worth stealing. The author said he was "mildly insulted" by this. This story seemed too good to be true and when later on in the book the author admits to making up stuff for his 10-page quarterly magazine "The Stillwater Booktown Times" it made me question whether the story was fabricated for juicy fodder for the book.… (mehr)

I live close enough to Stillwater, MN, to have gone there a couple of times during its "book city" peak. It was a joy to see all those shops and books.Though there were rare and expensive books on offer, I just wanted reading copies, and you could find all you wanted there. The last time a friend and I went, the last surviving bookstore was offering everything at sale prices because of impending closure. This book is written by the bookseller who helped Stillwater rise to its "book city" status and who was there to see the sad end, as people stopped looking for books in person and bought online instead ... or stopped looking for physical books at all. In addition to documenting the rise and fall of Stillwater - Book Town, the author recounts stories about the value of books and documents through the centuries that have led to thefts, forgeries and record auction prices. This book was not all that I had hoped for - more general history than Stillwater specific - but it's worth it for those of us who like reading books about books.… (mehr)

A contemporary eulogy of the used book store business from one of its more prominent and successful members. In addition to engaging tales of his adventures while building his business, and turning Stillwater, Minn., into the North America's first "book town," Goodman places the events in the context of the emerging detrimental impact of the internet of these stores. Having things too easily available not only priced items in a race to the bottom, but also removed the "thrill of the chase" for collectors who used to have to hunt diligently, often over years, to find the sought-after volume. Now it's there with a click which arguably achieves the same end but without the psychological satisfactions.… (mehr)