About this title: In this work of extraordinary charm and good humor, McMurtry recounts his life as both a reader and a writer, how the countless books he has read worked to form his literary tastes, while giving readers a lively look at the eccentrics who collect, sell, or simply lust after rare volumes.
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Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Former Library book. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Riverside, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781416583349ISBN:1416583343
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. Book. 8vo-over 7¾-9¾" tall. Simon & Schuster, 2008. Tan and red boards. Fine in a fine, unclipped dustjacket. As new. Bright, tight, crisp and unmarked. McMurtry takes us on his journey of his emerging as one of America's most astute book collectors and dealers. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781416583356ISBN:1416583351
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Audio CD
Publisher: Tantor Media
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781400158058ISBN:1400158052
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
"It's like a daily devotional for book lovers and it is wonderful. I won't summarize the book, below are a few quotes that stuck out to me while listening to the book and ideas that it created in me. It's a book about books and to someone who loves books it is entirely relatable and quaint.
"A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them."
McMurtry's discussion on rereading books, returning to something that doesn't change, made clear something I never understood. I rarely like rereading books because I have changed and thus my experience with those books changes too, but the comfort of an unchanging story is a beautiful and calming thought. Perhaps that is why people reminsce about their past. Their past is unchanging in some ways and that must be comforting to some.
"Bookselling will never quite expire unless reading expires first."
"The silent migration of books is facinating to me". This very real idea of collecting and loosing books is so well put and so true to life. You never expect to lose the books you aquire, but when I have in the past I feel like I've lost a friend. I rarely go right out and buy a new copy of a book I have loved. I like to find a used copy of it. I like the idea that someone else has read and experienced something before passing this book along."
"This is somewhat disjointed: it doesn't flow well, especially at the beginning. It's a leisurely journey through McMurtry's life with book collecting. I had a bit of help reading it because I'd read a mystery called "Booked to Die" by a bookman named John Dunning, which provided much background knowledge abuot bookselling and booksellers, and this fleshed out the sort of skeletal format of McMurtry's book. It is interesting and chatty and intimate, but the reader is left wanting much more. Several unusual people are mentioned, but the information on them is sketchy, and one is left wanting much more.
While I was reading this I realized that at one time I had a great interest in McMurtry's books and read about 11 of them in quick succession. Now I recall most of them fondly but distantly, except for "Lonesome Dove" which is, I think, a modern classic."
"I've read several of Larry McMurtry's novels, and definitely like his son James' music, and I am also a bibliophile. So you could say, I guess, I was heavily predisposed to enjoy this book. And enjoy it I did, and read it in one compulsive gulp today. Over the years I was aware that Mr. McMurtry was involved in the antiquarian book trade, and in fact operated near the top of the hierarchy in that world. This book, as the title indicates, is a chronicle told as memoir (time, in other words, shifts and is disjointed) of the life of Booked Up, the bookstore McMurtry operates. As with most books of this type (see A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes), the story here is one of the personalities--many of them, uh, idiosyncratic and eccentric--involved in this world, as well as the perils and rewards of doing business with them. If you are not a bibliophile or book scout, this book, as other reviewers have suggested, will probably read as an account of someone else's (albeit a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who writes engagingly) trips to rummage sales. If you are a bibliomane of any sort, then I expect you will find, as I did, this an exciting and highly readable book."
"Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite authors. A winner of a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar, McMurtry is the author of "The Last Picture Show," one of the great novels of growing up and small-town life. He wrote the creenplay to the 1971 movie of the same name directed by Peter Bagdanovich. A little-known fact about him is that he has been a collector of rare books for several decades and has run a bookstore, Booked Up, in Georgetown, D.C., 1970-87 and in Archer City, Texas, where he grew up, since then. Booked Up takes up four buildings and has about 350,000 volumes. Not bad for a town of 1,859 people that did not have a bookstore or library when McMurtry grew up there in the 1940s and early 1950s. "Books: A Memoir" tracks the effect books had on his life, his book-selling career, and his travels all over the world, including 2,000 estate sales, to find rare and antiquarian books."
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