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Post by helrunar on Jan 28, 2022 13:50:38 GMT
Those are brilliant, but not quite as startling as they might have been twenty or so years ago. Lamentably, the unceasing spectacle of "social media" has revealed the no longer shocking fact that the flagon of human ignorance is a vessel with no bottom.
We have a couple of little free libraries in my neighborhood. I've only brought home books from them a couple of times, but it's fun to pause and look at what's inside. I was startled to see an Ouspensky paperback in the one next to the kids' playground in the park across the street. I read the blurb and then put it back. It had been taken the next time I visited.
H.
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Post by David A. Riley on Jan 28, 2022 14:27:32 GMT
We hadn't had our bookshop open long when one woman brought back a book she'd bought from us which she wanted to exchange free of charge for another because she didn't like the ending.
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 28, 2022 15:19:20 GMT
We hadn't had our bookshop open long when one woman brought back a book she'd bought from us which she wanted to exchange free of charge for another because she didn't like the ending. Do tell us what your reply was!
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Post by David A. Riley on Jan 28, 2022 15:40:57 GMT
We hadn't had our bookshop open long when one woman brought back a book she'd bought from us which she wanted to exchange free of charge for another because she didn't like the ending. Do tell us what your reply was! To be honest we let her, though we left her in no doubt that this was not normal behaviour. We never saw her again. Luckily it was only a cheap paperback. £3, I think. Though it's customers, especially online, who buy the cheapest books who usually cause the most problems. Sell a book for £100 plus and the sale will go through with the minimum of fuss. But collectors of cheap books can be the fussiest. We had a bunch of Buffy the Vampire paperbacks which we were selling for from £1.50 to £4.00 each and someone sent me a list of them which they wanted me to confirm whether they were first edition, first printings.
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 28, 2022 15:44:51 GMT
Do tell us what your reply was! To be honest we let her, though we left her in no doubt that this was not normal behaviour. We never saw her again. Luckily it was only a cheap paperback. £3, I think. Though it's customers, especially online, who buy the cheapest books who usually cause the most problems. Sell a book for £100 plus and the sale will go through with the minimum of fuss. But collectors of cheap books can be the fussiest. We had a bunch of Buffy the Vampire paperbacks which we were selling for from £1.50 to £4.00 each and someone sent me a list of them which they wanted me to confirm whether they were first edition, first printings. It was kind of you to let her exchange the book; I'm glad she never darkened your door again afterwards.
Wouldn't a bookseller's life be grand if it weren't for pesky customers?!
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Post by andydecker on Jan 28, 2022 16:20:25 GMT
[/div] You have to feel sorry for people like him; I wonder which came first, the OCD or the choice of profession. My bookshelves would give him a heart attack; all different levels & even a few hardcovers with the spines facing the shelf ceiling so as to fit (shame on me).
My hand still automatically tries to click "Like".....
[/quote] My younger self didn't know it better, but today I would think: Personality Disorder He always was accompanied by his wife. Never said a word, I think. I guess they must be dead today, its been nearly 50 years. Maybe he haunts his bookshelf today. Don't worry about the spines facing the shlef. I also do this. Only millionaires and the master of Downton Abbey can constantly adjust the shelves to the height of the books in his library. I hate to do this, but I do this in a few cases where this is necessesary. But I hate it Though it's customers, especially online, who buy the cheapest books who usually cause the most problems. Sell a book for £100 plus and the sale will go through with the minimum of fuss. But collectors of cheap books can be the fussiest. We had a bunch of Buffy the Vampire paperbacks which we were selling for from £1.50 to £4.00 each and someone sent me a list of them which they wanted me to confirm whether they were first edition, first printings. Online-buyer really do complain? This would be too much hassle for me. Just today I got a missing Hutson which I read but never bothered to buy because it was, well, not so good. I had to send the copy back after reading back than. Imagine my surpeise when I discovered that this was a library copy which the seller forgot to mention. (or I didn't read in the small print, always a possibility, I have to confess) From the Linconshire County Council. I sighed, but I never would do the effort to send it back. Life is too short for such nonsense and it is not that important.
Yeah, because first editions of Buffy novels will someday be worth a fortune. Good grief.
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 28, 2022 16:33:46 GMT
By the sounds of him, the gentleman probably does haunt his bookshelf. I might end up haunting mine, for one reason or another. I'm not worried that all my books aren't horizontal; I'd like them to be as you do, but do the best I can with my limited shelving. I also have 2 drawers full of books (spines facing up) which probably is also not good.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 28, 2022 17:37:19 GMT
By the sounds of him, the gentleman probably does haunt his bookshelf. I might end up haunting mine, for one reason or another. I'm not worried that all my books aren't horizontal; I'd like them to be as you do, but do the best I can with my limited shelving. I also have 2 drawers full of books (spines facing up) which probably is also not good. In one instance where it was not possible to include another shelf without some major reconstruction I put a series of a few hundred paperbacks one upon the other without any separation to maintain the numbering. The books are not so weighty that it can damage the spine. Only if you want to pull a certain novel from the bottom row it gets a bit difficult. I also try to avoid to pile them up to save some space. But sometimes it is not possible to prevent that.
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 28, 2022 17:54:35 GMT
By the sounds of him, the gentleman probably does haunt his bookshelf. I might end up haunting mine, for one reason or another. I'm not worried that all my books aren't horizontal; I'd like them to be as you do, but do the best I can with my limited shelving. I also have 2 drawers full of books (spines facing up) which probably is also not good. In one instance where it was not possible to include another shelf without some major reconstruction I put a series of a few hundred paperbacks one upon the other without any separation to maintain the numbering. The books are not so weighty that it can damage the spine. Only if you want to pull a certain novel from the bottom row it gets a bit difficult. I also try to avoid to pile them up to save some space. But sometimes it is not possible to prevent that. It's a relief to find somebody who seems to have more books than I do. Well, I saw a couple once on "Hoarders"
(who were obliged to get rid of many or most of them)but nice to find somebody else. I presume you don't have that many!
Even before the internet, few people I knew/know seem(ed) to enjoy reading or have more than a shelf or half a shelf full, if that. Unlike many people, though, I like ebooks equally as much as printed.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 28, 2022 19:46:09 GMT
By the sounds of him, the gentleman probably does haunt his bookshelf. I might end up haunting mine, for one reason or another. I'm not worried that all my books aren't horizontal; I'd like them to be as you do, but do the best I can with my limited shelving. I also have 2 drawers full of books (spines facing up) which probably is also not good. In one instance where it was not possible to include another shelf without some major reconstruction I put a series of a few hundred paperbacks one upon the other without any separation to maintain the numbering. The books are not so weighty that it can damage the spine. Only if you want to pull a certain novel from the bottom row it gets a bit difficult. I also try to avoid to pile them up to save some space. But sometimes it is not possible to prevent that. Haha! Shelves! Luxury.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 28, 2022 21:25:22 GMT
I presume you don't have that many! Even before the internet, few people I knew seemed to enjoy reading or have more than a shelf or half a shelf full, if that. Unlike many peopl, though, I like ebooks equally as much as printed.
I have been collecting since the 80s, but I never bothered to maintain records, which I today sometimes regret. But I don't know the number of books and comics I have in print. Too many for sure.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 29, 2022 18:01:59 GMT
We have a couple of little free libraries in my neighborhood. I've only brought home books from them a couple of times, but it's fun to pause and look at what's inside. I was startled to see an Ouspensky paperback in the one next to the kids' playground in the park across the street. I read the blurb and then put it back. It had been taken the next time I visited. H. The Wapping Little Free Library is located just by the river on what has become my early morning walk, so I get to tidying it a couple of times a week on my way to talking to the ducks. Rather the LFL have any casts offs than the charity shop - there's less chance of them being pulped. The books don't tend to hang around long, the one exception being a copy of Dan Brown's The Davinci Code, which spent one long, freezing winter huddled in the box. It took a twitter campaign to find it a home.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 26, 2022 15:56:31 GMT
Many thanks to whoever donated three issues of the BBC History mag, a copy of A. E. Waite's Key to the Tarot and an ear. Rob Attar [ed] - BBC History: September 2021Ellie Cawthorne revisits the Salem witch trials; Peter Higginbotham wonders if "Hellish Workhouses" are deserving of their terrible press; Annika Bautz on the literary genius and enduring influence of Sir Walter Scott; Josephine Wilkinson finally identifies the man behind the iron mask; Katherine Harloe on the far right's enduring fascination with ancient cultures; Freya Gowrley on 'Supersized Georgians.' Gershom Gorenberg on the contemporaneous persecution of Jews across the Middle East during WWII; Alex von Tunzelmann on the rights and wrongs of statue toppling. Also of interest; 'Who was the Greenbrier Ghost?,' September's anniversaries ("Louis XIV succumbs to gangrene", "Two cabinet ministers duel at dawn"— why isn't this compulsory?), Nick Bennison visits an unlikely popular tourist attraction — Stockport's air raid shelters — and, perhaps as a sop to offended pleasantly plump pre-Victorian fatso's - a recipe for roly-poly pudding (from 1901's Manual of Workhouse Cookery). First time I've seen, let alone read the BBC publication, and genuinely impressed. Will try post details of the July & Aug 2021 issues later as the latter is something of a French Revolution special.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 26, 2022 20:31:12 GMT
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Post by helrunar on Jul 26, 2022 22:45:19 GMT
That mag sounds quite cool. I'll have to look up Roly-poly Pudding (which is not, but could be, a descriptive phrase for my waistline, alas). Waite's Tarot book is terrible. But perhaps it has a quaint charm. I hadn't realized that your local LFL must be near Wapping Old Stairs, a London area site that evokes memories of one of my favorite books, Sax Rohmer's The Dream Detective: londonist.com/2010/07/londonists_back_passage_54_wappingH.
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