If money were no object, what one book would you most like to add to your private library? This writer has posed that question to a great many book collectors over the past four+ decades. The answers received to this writer's question, though, may surprise you. When the choice comes down to a single book, the book chosen is almost never a rare or expensive title. Rather, it's usually a book with exceptionally strong sentimental value. For a collector in Texas, for example, it was a well-worn copy of The Poky Little Puppy. It was the first book the collector had ever managed to read entirely by himself. He lost the book when he moved to New York to attend college. For a collector in Georgia, it was a Bible which had been in her family since before the Civil... Continue reading

If you are like most Western book collectors, you probably have little familiarity with Japanese literature. Perhaps because the Japanese language relies on three different writing systems (two of which are syllabary systems), this writer has encountered few private collections of Japanese literature that were not assembled by native speakers of the language. This is unfortunate, for not only has Japan produced some of the world's greatest literature, it has produced some of the earliest surviving forms of world literature. Among these are one of the earliest surviving examples of the novel (The Tale of Genji); one of the world's earliest surviving examples of a story involving time travel (Urashima Tarō); Man'yōshū, one of the world's earliest surviving poetry anthologies; and Konjaku Monogatarishū, a 31-volume compilation of very early folktales from Japan, China and India, of which 28 volumes survive.... Continue reading

As many longtime TPL readers are aware, for the past couple of years it has been this writer's privilege and honor to contribute an occasional piece to the Fine Books & Collections Blog, official blog of Fine Books & Collections, the magazine (better known to its many fans as FB&C). Founded back in 2003 as OP magazine, and now under the capable editorial direction of Rebecca Rego Barry, FB&C is one of the finest magazines of its type that remains in print. It regularly features compelling news and articles about every aspect of book collecting, and numbers among its regular contributors such worthies as Nicholas Basbanes, Joel Silver, Jeremy Dibbell, Nate Pedersen ... to name only a few who come immediately to mind. If you have any interest at all in collecting the printed book, your faithful blogger considers FB&C... Continue reading

By your own admission, you are the type who buys whatever book or books appeal to you at the time: a paperback romance, perhaps, along with the latest critically acclaimed biography, a pop-up book for your youngest child and a really nice hardbound translation of some forgotten Chinese classic. If you have set aside a special little place in your home to store these books, you have a private library: Many of my friends and colleagues in the publishing, bookselling, library and book collecting communities--you know who you are!--have done the concept of the private library, and book collecting in general, a great disservice by continually harping about focus and condition. Not every reader on the planet is interested in, or can afford, a room full of custom-crafted mahogany shelves upon which sit endless rows of first edition, first printings... Continue reading

Given that the first book printed from moveable type in Western Europe contains numerous references to wine, and given that the technology for printing that first book may itself have been modeled upon the screw press used to extract wine from grapes, this writer has always found it puzzling that the cultivation, processing, distribution and consumption of wine is rarely a major thematic element in works of fiction. (I should note that this post is concerned only with wine made from grapes, and the fiction associated with same. For a more encompassing view of wine -- including rice wine -- visit Cerebral Boinkfest. In the absence of a better signifier -- VinoLit having already been spoken for by Mike Madigan's YouTube show -- I have coined the term OenoLit to refer to all such fiction.) The non-fiction titles that have... Continue reading

Epithalamium: From the Greek epi ("at") and thalamos ("nuptial chamber"). A celebratory song or poem, often in sonnet form, in honor of a bride or groom or both, usually praising their virtues, describing the events of the wedding day, and wishing them good fortune.... ODLIS (Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science) Even among those few folks who still collect printed books of poetry, it's hard to find many who focus on the epithalamium (pl. epithalamia), one of the most ancient of all types of poetry in the Western world. Basically a type of ode, the epithalamium counts among its better known practitioners such ancient worthies as Sappho, Pindar and Catullus; Renaissance masters such as Ronsard, Donne and Edmund Spenser; and modern poets such as Gerald Manley Hopkins and A. E. Housman. (The examples below are via the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek... Continue reading

His mere arrival itself had been excessively mysterious, or at least had proceeded very differently from that of the others, for he had not come by train and then by bus; for however unbelievable it seemed, the afternoon of the day of his arrival, perhaps around six o'clock or half-past six, he simply turned into the campground gates, like a person who had just arrived on foot, with nothing more than a curt nod; and when the organizers politely and with a particular deference inquired as to his name, and then began to question him more pressingly as to how he had arrived, he replied only that someone had brought him to a bend in the road in a car; but as in the all-enfolding silence no one had heard the sound of any car at all that could have... Continue reading

He was the soul of honesty himself, and slow to think evil of others; so that he was often taken in. Of envy and jealousy he knew as little as the blind do of colour. He was swift to forgive and to forget even serious injuries.... He was enthusiastic for good learning, and felt his work to be his own reward. It was delightful to see him with the first pages of some new book in his hands, some author of whom he approved. His face was radiant with pleasure, and you might have supposed that he had already received a large return of profit. The excellence of his work would bear comparison with that of the best printers of Venice and Rome.... Erasmus, on the death of Johann Froben, 1527 (quoted in The Age of Erasmus by P. S.... Continue reading