Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire is a recent book and it’s terrific. The subtitle is The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller, and it and another book, A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski, both concern working... Read More

Who Gets to Go Back-to-the-Land? by Valerie Padilla Carroll came out in December 2022 from the University of Nebraska Press. The subtitle is Gender and Race in U.S. Self-Sufficiency Popular Culture, and I was interviewed for book. In 1981, I... Read More

Real books are yang, and virtual books (ebooks and anything else read or watched on an electronic screen) are yin. That’s because real books have physical substance and virtual anything doesn’t—it’s ephemeral. The second chapter of Temple Grandin’s latest (fabulous)... Read More

Taped-together books are those that are inexpertly repaired, using materials that are not designed for book repair: regular transparent tape, packing tape, blue masking tape, duct tape, that sort of thing. The reason a book gets taped together by a... Read More

Adding to a collection by happenstance is the yin way to do it and targeting specific acquisitions is the yang way—yang being specific and yin being less so. Do remember that a yin/yang symbol does not have a direct straight... Read More