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Books: A Memoir
Larry McMurtry is known to be reclusive and extremely private, rarely giving interviews or making public appearances. Audiences are therefore sure to be eager to read this intimate and surprisingly personal memoir of the brilliant writer's love affair with books. McMurtry writes about his life as a boy growing up in a largely bookless world; as a young man devouring the world of literature; as a fledgling writer and family man; and as one of America's most prominent "bookmen," becoming the astute and adventurous collector who would eventually open stores of rare and collectible books in Georgetown, Houston, and his hometown of Archer, Texas. In Books: A Memoir, McMurtry gives us a lively look at the eccentrics who collect, sell, or simply lust after rare books. Books is like the best kind of diary-full of wonderful anecdotes, amazing characters, great gossip, and shrewd observations about authors, book people, literature, and himself. At once chatty, revealing, and deeply satisfying, Books is, like its author, erudite, life-loving, and full of great stories.
Paperback
First published July 8, 2008
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About the author
Larry McMurtry
151 books4,106 followersLarry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations (13 wins). He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.
His 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove was adapted into a television miniseries that earned 18 Emmy Award nominations (seven wins). The subsequent three novels in his Lonesome Dove series were adapted as three more miniseries, earning eight more Emmy nominations. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana adapted the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurtry and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2014, McMurtry received the National Humanities Medal.
In Tracy Daugherty's 2023 biography of McMurtry, the biographer quotes critic Dave Hickey as saying about McMurtry: "Larry is a writer, and it's kind of like being a critter. If you leave a cow alone, he'll eat grass. If you leave Larry alone, he'll write books. When he's in public, he may say hello and goodbye, but otherwise he is just resting, getting ready to go write."
His 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove was adapted into a television miniseries that earned 18 Emmy Award nominations (seven wins). The subsequent three novels in his Lonesome Dove series were adapted as three more miniseries, earning eight more Emmy nominations. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana adapted the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurtry and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2014, McMurtry received the National Humanities Medal.
In Tracy Daugherty's 2023 biography of McMurtry, the biographer quotes critic Dave Hickey as saying about McMurtry: "Larry is a writer, and it's kind of like being a critter. If you leave a cow alone, he'll eat grass. If you leave Larry alone, he'll write books. When he's in public, he may say hello and goodbye, but otherwise he is just resting, getting ready to go write."
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February 6, 2015
This is another book that I wanted to love, but it disappointed me. It started off promising enough, with McMurtry waxing nostalgic about the books he read as a kid in the 1940s and 50s, but it quickly devolved into bland stories of name-dropping in the bookseller business and listing how many thousands of dollars of books he bought from so-and-so. (In addition to being a prolific novelist, he also owned a bookstore for many years.)
While there were a few fun anecdotes and I gathered a sizable list of other titles that sounded good to read, McMurtry's book felt disjointed and half-hearted. There are more than 100 chapters here, many of which are only one or two pages long and less than 200 words each. McMurtry boasts several times of his dedication to writing five or ten pages every morning, but every chapter had the feeling of being dashed off as quickly as possible. Several times I turned the page expecting for a thought to be continued, but there was nothing else there.
And then he managed to push my disappointment into full-blown irritation. Late in the book he starts to muse about changes in the book business and the popularity of the Internet, and he wonders whether people will continue to read. He also complains about libraries installing computers where books used to be. At this point I need to state that I am a librarian, and this observation has grown so tiresome and pedantic as to become ridiculous. OF COURSE PEOPLE WILL STILL READ. People are reading more than ever. Every library I know has had an increase in circulation and attendance since the recession started, and print books are a big part of that.
Furthermore, the incredible demand for e-books is creating more readers -- and younger ones -- every day. McMurtry just spent 250 pages talking about how many books he's sold over the years, and how many books he's read over the years, and how many loyal customers he's had over the years, and then he obtusely asks if people still read? I'm not sure McMurtry was reading his own prose.
Lest you think I found nothing redeemable, I will share a quote I liked from early in the book (before he pissed me off):
"Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of BOOKS, not merely of the information in them."
I love my personal library of books. It's only a few hundred volumes, but each one means something special to me. And I like reading books about books because it's a way of bridging the gap between readers and sharing titles, but what should have been a pleasant, enjoyable memoir about books was spoiled by McMurtry's half-assedness and grumpy old man-itude. You have been added to my Obnoxious Narrator shelf, sir.
While there were a few fun anecdotes and I gathered a sizable list of other titles that sounded good to read, McMurtry's book felt disjointed and half-hearted. There are more than 100 chapters here, many of which are only one or two pages long and less than 200 words each. McMurtry boasts several times of his dedication to writing five or ten pages every morning, but every chapter had the feeling of being dashed off as quickly as possible. Several times I turned the page expecting for a thought to be continued, but there was nothing else there.
And then he managed to push my disappointment into full-blown irritation. Late in the book he starts to muse about changes in the book business and the popularity of the Internet, and he wonders whether people will continue to read. He also complains about libraries installing computers where books used to be. At this point I need to state that I am a librarian, and this observation has grown so tiresome and pedantic as to become ridiculous. OF COURSE PEOPLE WILL STILL READ. People are reading more than ever. Every library I know has had an increase in circulation and attendance since the recession started, and print books are a big part of that.
Furthermore, the incredible demand for e-books is creating more readers -- and younger ones -- every day. McMurtry just spent 250 pages talking about how many books he's sold over the years, and how many books he's read over the years, and how many loyal customers he's had over the years, and then he obtusely asks if people still read? I'm not sure McMurtry was reading his own prose.
Lest you think I found nothing redeemable, I will share a quote I liked from early in the book (before he pissed me off):
"Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of BOOKS, not merely of the information in them."
I love my personal library of books. It's only a few hundred volumes, but each one means something special to me. And I like reading books about books because it's a way of bridging the gap between readers and sharing titles, but what should have been a pleasant, enjoyable memoir about books was spoiled by McMurtry's half-assedness and grumpy old man-itude. You have been added to my Obnoxious Narrator shelf, sir.
June 30, 2011
for some reason, this book got quite a few poor reviews and ratings on goodreads. i, on the other hand, thought it was great. there is nothing i like reading better than memoirs, anecdotes etc. about book selling and book buying. and this book is literally full of them. mcmurtry has spent almost 50 years in the book business, and although he is mainly famous to most people for his writing, he considers the book business to be his primary occupation.
probably the most amazing thing is that his own personal library consists of 28,000 books...that's 9 times what i have, and i have a lot of books. i can only dream about owning that many books and having a place big enough to house them.
so, what can i say, i'm a confirmed bibliophile and/or bibliomaniac. if you are too, you'll love this book.
probably the most amazing thing is that his own personal library consists of 28,000 books...that's 9 times what i have, and i have a lot of books. i can only dream about owning that many books and having a place big enough to house them.
so, what can i say, i'm a confirmed bibliophile and/or bibliomaniac. if you are too, you'll love this book.
December 21, 2010
This is kind of a stream-of-consciousness memoir about McMurtry's bookselling career; it's choppy and fragmented (some of the chapters are half a page long) and feels like it was typed up and taken directly to the printer. The early chapters covering his life in Texas and various antiquarian booksellers he did business with in California were rather boring, but I became interested when he began discussing the bookstore he co-owned in D.C., which oddly enough I had never been to, though I have shopped at Second Story Books (one of his rivals) many times. There's a funny anecdote about Janet Auchincloss, the mother of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who wanted to unload her dead husband's book collection but couldn't bring herself, even in the 1980s, to interact with people "in the trades." There are gossipy stories about David and Evangeline Bruce, Georgetown high society figures. McMurtry discusses the type of antiquarian books he's most interested in. One of his favorite genres to read is travel writing; he collects the writing of 19th century lady travelers. He tired of reading fiction some time in the early 80s and doesn't read it anymore. His musings on the tension between writing and reading are interesting: "When I'm writing I often spin out my daily pages as rapidly as possible, in order to get back to whatever I am reading." You definitely get the sense that antiquarian book collecting and dealing is his first love, and writing is how he subsidizes that. He points us in the direction of some interesting sounding books: David Bruce's World War II diary, published by his wife Evangeline; two biographies of Bruce; Literary Taste: How to Form It With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English Literature, The Library, Tent Life in Siberia: An Incredible Account of Siberian Adventure, Travel, and Survival, Siberia And The Exile System, Hours in a Library: Gray and His School. Sterne. Country Books. George Eliot. Autobiography. Carlyle's Ethics. the State Trials. Coleridge.
December 6, 2009
Books: A Memoir, by Larry McMurtry
Being a bit of an amateur bibliophile – I would never deign to put myself in the same class with folks like McMurtry and his wife, who together have owned several bookstores in their time – I jumped at the chance to immerse myself in McMurtry’s book lust. The best chapters are in the beginning, where he recounts his childhood in the waning years of the Great Depression and with the onslaught of WWII. Perhaps it is just the poignant childhood nostalgia that suckers me in the most. Or maybe my own childhood infatuation with books, libraries, and bookstores – which, of course, continues unabated today. Whatever the case, McMurtry is at his finest when he describing his emerging love-affair with the book.
However, this memoir falters a bit in the last third after his narrative begins to slowly unhinge itself. He jumps around not only in time, but place as well. His bookish anecdotes about his encounters with bibliophilic eccentrics – who move in and out of his life for brief stays – are charming enough. But his inability to contain narrative focus in the last portion left me slightly deflated by the closing word of the final chapter. A bit anti-climactic, if you ask me.
Despite this perceived shortcoming, McMurtry delivers many moments that are pure gems. Take, for instance, his reflections upon being a book hoarder.
"For the first twenty years as a book hunter I actually read almost all the books I had gone to such trouble to find. Getting the books I wanted to read was the main reason for the pursuit. But there can be secondary and tertiary reasons for wanting a particular book. One if the pleasure of holding the physical book itself: savoring the type, the binding, the book’s feel and heft. All these things can be enjoyed apart from literature, which some, but not all, books contain."
He also reminded me of a once great, but long gone, bookselling establishment here in Seattle – this being Shorey’s Books.
"Many once-great stores – I think of Shorey’s in Seattle and the West Coast Acres of Books in Long Beach (soon to cease to be, its owner told me recently) – exist as mere shadows of their former selves."
Once housed in an old, dilapidated brick building near where the Seattle Art Museum now stands tall, I remember Shorey’s tall ceilings, the musty smell of paperbacks, and coming across a copy of Bram Stoker’s Lair of the White Worm – which, stupidly enough, I didn’t purchase at the time (as I was a dollar-weary high schooler). No, instead, it has taken me twenty years to come across a copy of that – this last summer, as a matter of fact, when I didn’t hesitate to shell out a few paltry bucks.
Reflecting upon his many decades spent living and breathing all things hard and paperback, McMurtry sums it up best near the close of his memoir about books:
"I realized that reading was probably the cheapest and most stable pleasure of life. Sometimes books excite me, sometimes they sustain me, but rarely do they disappoint me – as books, that is, if not necessarily the poetry, history, of fiction that they contain."
I know exactly how he feels.
Being a bit of an amateur bibliophile – I would never deign to put myself in the same class with folks like McMurtry and his wife, who together have owned several bookstores in their time – I jumped at the chance to immerse myself in McMurtry’s book lust. The best chapters are in the beginning, where he recounts his childhood in the waning years of the Great Depression and with the onslaught of WWII. Perhaps it is just the poignant childhood nostalgia that suckers me in the most. Or maybe my own childhood infatuation with books, libraries, and bookstores – which, of course, continues unabated today. Whatever the case, McMurtry is at his finest when he describing his emerging love-affair with the book.
However, this memoir falters a bit in the last third after his narrative begins to slowly unhinge itself. He jumps around not only in time, but place as well. His bookish anecdotes about his encounters with bibliophilic eccentrics – who move in and out of his life for brief stays – are charming enough. But his inability to contain narrative focus in the last portion left me slightly deflated by the closing word of the final chapter. A bit anti-climactic, if you ask me.
Despite this perceived shortcoming, McMurtry delivers many moments that are pure gems. Take, for instance, his reflections upon being a book hoarder.
"For the first twenty years as a book hunter I actually read almost all the books I had gone to such trouble to find. Getting the books I wanted to read was the main reason for the pursuit. But there can be secondary and tertiary reasons for wanting a particular book. One if the pleasure of holding the physical book itself: savoring the type, the binding, the book’s feel and heft. All these things can be enjoyed apart from literature, which some, but not all, books contain."
He also reminded me of a once great, but long gone, bookselling establishment here in Seattle – this being Shorey’s Books.
"Many once-great stores – I think of Shorey’s in Seattle and the West Coast Acres of Books in Long Beach (soon to cease to be, its owner told me recently) – exist as mere shadows of their former selves."
Once housed in an old, dilapidated brick building near where the Seattle Art Museum now stands tall, I remember Shorey’s tall ceilings, the musty smell of paperbacks, and coming across a copy of Bram Stoker’s Lair of the White Worm – which, stupidly enough, I didn’t purchase at the time (as I was a dollar-weary high schooler). No, instead, it has taken me twenty years to come across a copy of that – this last summer, as a matter of fact, when I didn’t hesitate to shell out a few paltry bucks.
Reflecting upon his many decades spent living and breathing all things hard and paperback, McMurtry sums it up best near the close of his memoir about books:
"I realized that reading was probably the cheapest and most stable pleasure of life. Sometimes books excite me, sometimes they sustain me, but rarely do they disappoint me – as books, that is, if not necessarily the poetry, history, of fiction that they contain."
I know exactly how he feels.
June 21, 2018
3.8 🌟
I found this book accidentally when I was browsing my library for a memoir to complete a reading challenge. I was intrigued by the description. Well, it's titled Books: A memoir, I couldn't simply put it back on the shelf! The opening lines pulled me in and I was hooked. I don't remember my parents reading me a story - perhaps that's why I've made up so many. They were good parents, but just not story reader."
The author tells the story how he got his first book and what it meant to him. He is an author and screenplay writer but in here, he didn't really goes into how he became those two but he tells about how he started collecting books which led to he and his partner, opening a secondhand bookstore. He also shares a lot what he thinks about reading, his worries about the condition of secondhand books industry. Readers could relate to him in the way that we read; we read a few books at once, we re-read a lot and we become obsesses about one type of books or genre and read only that until the obsession disappeared. Or should I say, I am like that. 😆
An unfavorable about his writing is that it's not consistent. He would at one moment telling us about his time in college but then blabber on about someone he knows and a chapter later, went back to his college. My reading was a bit distracted with the nonlinear storytelling that he used. Later on, at chapter 57, he supposedly explained that it was a trend. It's called interrupted narrative and it was started by "Dickens and other popular, serially published nineteenth century novelist..".
It was partly what I was expecting & partly not. Overall, I enjoyed it and I'm going to look out for his Lonesome Dove book series.
July 25, 2008
Without having read a review of this book, I expected it to be an intellectual autobiography in which McMurtry discussed the books he loved, hated, was influenced by, could never finish, and so on. Instead it was about McMurtry's book business: the buying and selling of books that he's done for decades as the owner of a bookstore. If you want to read about characters in the book trade, professional and nonprofessional buyers of books, some great purchases and sales that McMurtry's experienced along the way, various bookmen and -women who have made their favorable and not so favorable impressions on him, this may be the book for you. It wasn't the book for me.
December 14, 2015
Larry McMurtry is known for his novels Terms of Endearment and his 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, among many other things. But what people might not know about Larry McMurtry is he is also a rare-book scout. Owning many second hand bookstores called Booked Up, McMurtry is always on the hunt for good books. Book is a memoir of adventures as a book seller.
Let’s face it, I love a good book memoir so I thought I had to check this one out, but I’m a little disappointed. At times in this book it felt more like bragging than actual book scouting; I don’t really enjoy reading a whole lot of “I found a book that was worth hundreds of dollars and brought it for mere dollars”. There needed to be a bit more about his love for the books and less showing off to really make this book enjoyable.
I think it would be cool to be a book seller or scout and it was interesting to read about his journey as one. I did actually visit all the second hand book stores in search for gems so maybe this book did have an effect on me. The only difference was, gems for me are the books I really want to read and not books that would make me money. I also would have enjoyed some more about Larry McMurtry’s reading life as well amd the books he was passionate about or recommends, but this just wasn’t there.
I think this book just lacked passion overall; I felt like Larry McMurtry saw books as money makers and there was no love for them. It’s an interesting book but now I know what to look for in a book about books, I don’t think I would pick up another book like this; unless recommended to me. Book sellers or book scouts may get more out of this book but I have a feeling that most would probably share my opinion.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
Let’s face it, I love a good book memoir so I thought I had to check this one out, but I’m a little disappointed. At times in this book it felt more like bragging than actual book scouting; I don’t really enjoy reading a whole lot of “I found a book that was worth hundreds of dollars and brought it for mere dollars”. There needed to be a bit more about his love for the books and less showing off to really make this book enjoyable.
I think it would be cool to be a book seller or scout and it was interesting to read about his journey as one. I did actually visit all the second hand book stores in search for gems so maybe this book did have an effect on me. The only difference was, gems for me are the books I really want to read and not books that would make me money. I also would have enjoyed some more about Larry McMurtry’s reading life as well amd the books he was passionate about or recommends, but this just wasn’t there.
I think this book just lacked passion overall; I felt like Larry McMurtry saw books as money makers and there was no love for them. It’s an interesting book but now I know what to look for in a book about books, I don’t think I would pick up another book like this; unless recommended to me. Book sellers or book scouts may get more out of this book but I have a feeling that most would probably share my opinion.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...
July 13, 2008
I love Larry McMurtry's stories (especially the westerns), but it's always nice to learn about what makes the author 'tick'. 'Books' is interesting, and the reader learns a great deal about bookselling (not the typical retail type of bookselling), bookdealing, and bookscouting. If you don't have a great love of books (I don't mean just the contents), some of the chapters might go over your head. He writes about the deals he's made, the people he sells to, the whole operation of the used book trade. It's people like Mr. McMurtry (and all used book dealers) who keep my love of books alive. He even mentions Powell's, which is a favorite place for me.
June 5, 2019
While McMurty is one of my favorite writers (especially for his Lonesome Dove), this volume was not as enjoyable as expected, though there are nuggets that interested me, probably because I am a bookseller too, and love books besides. Basically a collection of casual vignettes concerning his lifelong passion for bookselling and scouting. It was somewhat "off-the-top-of-the-head" remembrances of specific purchases and insider commentary on other notable booksellers. It certainly will not appeal to most readers, methinks, but if you like books there might be some value in trying this.
June 29, 2017
You know, I hate you, McMurtry. You can buy ALL DA BOOKS and I have to go to the library. I give you a raspberry. Shut it! I don't want to hear about your 28,000 book collection or your constant acquisitions anymore.
May 29, 2019
Larry McMurtry author of some thirty or so novels, 10-15 non-fiction and a handful of memoirs (one of which is this book) WAS for most of his writing life a committed "book scout" and antiquarian bookseller. This book chronicles THAT, his book scouting/buying/selling years which, sadly it seems mostly come to its conclusion, though some semblance of "Booked Up" his final destination bookstore still exists in my [greater] backyard of Archer City, Texas. I need to nip out an have a look-see at what is there including his prairie house with a personal library of some 28,000 volumes.
Many of us readers come by books to read through of course our local libraries, but if your interests are lit fiction local lib's often are lacking - buying books new is easier these days with Amazon but if you're like me you detest spending all your book money with this behemoth when a second-hand store with any snap is accessible and/or a local INDEPENDANT store with some knowledgeable staff to assist and maybe talk shop with who appreciates your greenies as well as your person. Being somewhat curtailed in movement, as in flitting around, I reluctantly deal with that mega-merchandiser more than is tasteful. Ho & hum.
Anyhoo, books are on the menu here, how & where, who & what and so on. Like Ms. Fio here I'm hell bent on a given writer and am reading a plethora of his titles until they run dry. A "Minor Regional Novelist" he calls himself with no qualms or self disparagement meaning he's writing some very good, some mediocre and a few paltry versions but all in all a nice working oeuvre. If you, like me are a book rat who loves the dust & clutter of a seasoned second-hand store, wade in the water's warm & inviting and, you just may come up, as always happens, with a few more titles to add to your ever expanding list of t0-reads!
Many of us readers come by books to read through of course our local libraries, but if your interests are lit fiction local lib's often are lacking - buying books new is easier these days with Amazon but if you're like me you detest spending all your book money with this behemoth when a second-hand store with any snap is accessible and/or a local INDEPENDANT store with some knowledgeable staff to assist and maybe talk shop with who appreciates your greenies as well as your person. Being somewhat curtailed in movement, as in flitting around, I reluctantly deal with that mega-merchandiser more than is tasteful. Ho & hum.
Anyhoo, books are on the menu here, how & where, who & what and so on. Like Ms. Fio here I'm hell bent on a given writer and am reading a plethora of his titles until they run dry. A "Minor Regional Novelist" he calls himself with no qualms or self disparagement meaning he's writing some very good, some mediocre and a few paltry versions but all in all a nice working oeuvre. If you, like me are a book rat who loves the dust & clutter of a seasoned second-hand store, wade in the water's warm & inviting and, you just may come up, as always happens, with a few more titles to add to your ever expanding list of t0-reads!
January 18, 2015
Books is a book about books, book stores, dealers, buyers, scouts, occasionally writers and a little about Larry McMurtry. The book gives me a bit of book fever, makes me want to run out to every yard sale and book store within a hundred mile radius. However today is Sunday, late afternoon. It is raining, but it is about to turn to snow. So here I am listening to Neil Young's Storytone and writing a review about Books. Did I mention this was an excellent book? It is.
July 10, 2015
I really wanted to love this book. This started so promising, explaining how the author fell in love with books. But then it turn in some sort of business description and it lost me.
January 18, 2013
I suspect that most readers of this book will come to it through the author's fiction writing. His fans will be interested in McMurtry’s "other life" as a book scout and bookstore owner. Perhaps such fans will be interested into this window on the author's thoughts and experiences. I came to the book through a different route, as a consumer of biographies and memoirs of book people and tales of the book trade (yes, there is such a literature). From this perspective, I found the book to be very puzzling. Indeed, if readers didn't know who McMurtry was, I think that they would be surprised to discover that he is an award-winning novelist, given the book's lack of organization and thematic continuity.
The book starts interestingly enough, with McMurtry telling of his early bookless childhood, his discovery of books and reading, and then his earliest book-buying days. The biographical thread is soon lost, however, and the book settles into a series of very short chapters, most describing an individual event or thought. Although the events are roughly chronological, they do not add up to the story of his life or bookselling. They seem disconnected and often rather diffidently written, as if the author didn't want to claim much interest for them.
Many of the chapters surround a single incident, and this anecdotal aspect of book-buying and -selling is a common enough way to write such a book. However, McMurtry often purposefully sucks the blood out of these anecdotes, leaving out background, omitting details that might be embarrassing to a participant, or simply stating things without describing them (the "so-and-so was quite a character" comment, making the reader wonder just what kind of character so-and-so was).
For example, the author tells the tale of a book scout who found a copy of Poe's "Tamerlane." This sounds like a great story, one that could take up a couple of pages of the book by giving complete background and juicy details (even if some are made up). There is a way to tell this anecdote, familiar to readers of book-trade stories. First, readers need to know that "Tamerlane" was for a long time the Holy Grail of American book collecting, as the rarest of Poe's books by far. The frustration of collectors willing to pay millions for this unavailable book should be detailed. Then the book scout himself should be profiled, with all his adorable quirks. Then comes the story surrounding the discovery, which almost always involves the book scout giving up... but then noticing an old box of books behind the counter (or perhaps a book covered in dust under the dog's bed--the more remote the better). Once having identified the book, the scout must remain very calm and bargain the seller down as much as possible, so that he or she has no idea that this book is worth more than all the rest of the stock put together. Hopefully the scout gets it for 75 cents or something and then sells it to Bill Gates for $500,000.
What we get from "Books" is a single paragraph, with no explanation of Tamerlane's importance, no information whatever about the scout, no story about its discovery or about its subsequent sale. Indeed, as written, this is a mere random fact about someone buying a single book for an unknown price and then doing we don't know what with it--it's a completely uninteresting fact, rather than an anecdote. If there was no story here (which seems unlikely), why bother to tell us about it at all? Although the entire book is not quite so bloodless, too much of it is very short accounts of sales or buying, with very little flesh on the stories. Even a fan of this genre like me was tapping my foot waiting for the book to be over.
In another anecdote, a collector asked for McMurtry's store to give him an offer on his library. He never got back to the store, and they gave up. "Several years" later, he called up and told them to come and take the books away. Interesting! But why did the owner decide not to sell them the first time and why did he then change his mind? Absolutely nothing is said about either: "He had owned those books as long as he wanted to" is the only comment. This is hardly informative. Does McMurtry have no thoughts on what makes people hold onto their books? Or want to get rid of all of them? If not, why is he writing a book about this?
Towards the end, the author starts to give his thoughts on reading, the future of books, the role of bookstores, and so on. I was honestly interested in finding out the author's opinion on these things. However, the mini-essays were often simply his conclusions, with little explanation or justification. In one essay, he talks about how he fell into a depression and could only read diaries. Why diaries?? No explanation! Then he states that he still rereads the diaries, with the following aphorism: "The motives for rereading are different from those of first readings, but the rereads are no less valuable for that." Mmmmm.... right. But what ARE the motives for each? Surely someone who has read and reread (and written) as much as McMurtry must have some ideas about this. Instead, we're given this very flat conclusion.
At the end, I thought that the author clearly could have written an interesting and insightful book about this topic, but my sense is that he simply did not take the time and effort to do so. Many chapters are written independently, and I imagine him thinking, "Oh, what about the time we tried to buy that collection of erotica?" and then jotting down a brief account of it and then making it the next chapter. The next day he had a quick thought about audiobooks and so wrote that down, and it became the next chapter.
I'm sorry to be so negative about the book, which I honestly expected to enjoy. I read it a month after reading a conceptually similar book, "A Pound of Paper" by John Baxter. It also begins with the author's childhood and early discovery of books and writing, also following him through his life as a book scout and then writer and English professor. But Baxter is the master of the anecdote, and he also gives the reader rich detail about the characters and venues of British book sales, including the times he was robbed or pulled a fast one on someone else. Baxter's anecdotes work because he writes them like a novelist, who doesn't seem to care about whether he hurts the "characters'" feelings. I'm sure he made up details when he didn't remember. But what do I care?
Other books to consider are those by the booksellers Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern, who describe their trips to Europe after the war, giving detailed bibliographical information on the books and incisive portraits of the eccentric antique booksellers. Finally, a recent entry is a book by David Batterham, "Among Booksellers," consisting of letters to a friend he wrote while on book-buying tours of the Continent. This goes well into the personal realm in describing the everyday victories and disasters of both travel and book-buying. Although I had never heard of the author (who does not seem to be an important figure), I found the book oddly compelling, as Batterham pours out his feelings as well as bookish information. It is that personal touch that seems to be missing from so much of McMurtry's memoir, as if he were under a court order not to violate his or anyone else's privacy. Perhaps in addition to reading diaries, he is keeping a diary. If it is ever publishing, I am sure it will contain more of his feelings and thoughts than he put into "Books."
The book starts interestingly enough, with McMurtry telling of his early bookless childhood, his discovery of books and reading, and then his earliest book-buying days. The biographical thread is soon lost, however, and the book settles into a series of very short chapters, most describing an individual event or thought. Although the events are roughly chronological, they do not add up to the story of his life or bookselling. They seem disconnected and often rather diffidently written, as if the author didn't want to claim much interest for them.
Many of the chapters surround a single incident, and this anecdotal aspect of book-buying and -selling is a common enough way to write such a book. However, McMurtry often purposefully sucks the blood out of these anecdotes, leaving out background, omitting details that might be embarrassing to a participant, or simply stating things without describing them (the "so-and-so was quite a character" comment, making the reader wonder just what kind of character so-and-so was).
For example, the author tells the tale of a book scout who found a copy of Poe's "Tamerlane." This sounds like a great story, one that could take up a couple of pages of the book by giving complete background and juicy details (even if some are made up). There is a way to tell this anecdote, familiar to readers of book-trade stories. First, readers need to know that "Tamerlane" was for a long time the Holy Grail of American book collecting, as the rarest of Poe's books by far. The frustration of collectors willing to pay millions for this unavailable book should be detailed. Then the book scout himself should be profiled, with all his adorable quirks. Then comes the story surrounding the discovery, which almost always involves the book scout giving up... but then noticing an old box of books behind the counter (or perhaps a book covered in dust under the dog's bed--the more remote the better). Once having identified the book, the scout must remain very calm and bargain the seller down as much as possible, so that he or she has no idea that this book is worth more than all the rest of the stock put together. Hopefully the scout gets it for 75 cents or something and then sells it to Bill Gates for $500,000.
What we get from "Books" is a single paragraph, with no explanation of Tamerlane's importance, no information whatever about the scout, no story about its discovery or about its subsequent sale. Indeed, as written, this is a mere random fact about someone buying a single book for an unknown price and then doing we don't know what with it--it's a completely uninteresting fact, rather than an anecdote. If there was no story here (which seems unlikely), why bother to tell us about it at all? Although the entire book is not quite so bloodless, too much of it is very short accounts of sales or buying, with very little flesh on the stories. Even a fan of this genre like me was tapping my foot waiting for the book to be over.
In another anecdote, a collector asked for McMurtry's store to give him an offer on his library. He never got back to the store, and they gave up. "Several years" later, he called up and told them to come and take the books away. Interesting! But why did the owner decide not to sell them the first time and why did he then change his mind? Absolutely nothing is said about either: "He had owned those books as long as he wanted to" is the only comment. This is hardly informative. Does McMurtry have no thoughts on what makes people hold onto their books? Or want to get rid of all of them? If not, why is he writing a book about this?
Towards the end, the author starts to give his thoughts on reading, the future of books, the role of bookstores, and so on. I was honestly interested in finding out the author's opinion on these things. However, the mini-essays were often simply his conclusions, with little explanation or justification. In one essay, he talks about how he fell into a depression and could only read diaries. Why diaries?? No explanation! Then he states that he still rereads the diaries, with the following aphorism: "The motives for rereading are different from those of first readings, but the rereads are no less valuable for that." Mmmmm.... right. But what ARE the motives for each? Surely someone who has read and reread (and written) as much as McMurtry must have some ideas about this. Instead, we're given this very flat conclusion.
At the end, I thought that the author clearly could have written an interesting and insightful book about this topic, but my sense is that he simply did not take the time and effort to do so. Many chapters are written independently, and I imagine him thinking, "Oh, what about the time we tried to buy that collection of erotica?" and then jotting down a brief account of it and then making it the next chapter. The next day he had a quick thought about audiobooks and so wrote that down, and it became the next chapter.
I'm sorry to be so negative about the book, which I honestly expected to enjoy. I read it a month after reading a conceptually similar book, "A Pound of Paper" by John Baxter. It also begins with the author's childhood and early discovery of books and writing, also following him through his life as a book scout and then writer and English professor. But Baxter is the master of the anecdote, and he also gives the reader rich detail about the characters and venues of British book sales, including the times he was robbed or pulled a fast one on someone else. Baxter's anecdotes work because he writes them like a novelist, who doesn't seem to care about whether he hurts the "characters'" feelings. I'm sure he made up details when he didn't remember. But what do I care?
Other books to consider are those by the booksellers Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern, who describe their trips to Europe after the war, giving detailed bibliographical information on the books and incisive portraits of the eccentric antique booksellers. Finally, a recent entry is a book by David Batterham, "Among Booksellers," consisting of letters to a friend he wrote while on book-buying tours of the Continent. This goes well into the personal realm in describing the everyday victories and disasters of both travel and book-buying. Although I had never heard of the author (who does not seem to be an important figure), I found the book oddly compelling, as Batterham pours out his feelings as well as bookish information. It is that personal touch that seems to be missing from so much of McMurtry's memoir, as if he were under a court order not to violate his or anyone else's privacy. Perhaps in addition to reading diaries, he is keeping a diary. If it is ever publishing, I am sure it will contain more of his feelings and thoughts than he put into "Books."
October 2, 2022
An interesting, easy to read, short memoir focussed on the author’s book buying and selling business. The author roughly recalls his over fifty years of buying and selling books. There are some interesting anecdotes like sighting an editors copy of Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’, with “Call me Ishmael” crossed out!
The book is a little repetitive in that the author writes of many times over the years where he bought out a particular bookshop.
This book was first published in 2008.
The book is a little repetitive in that the author writes of many times over the years where he bought out a particular bookshop.
This book was first published in 2008.
January 24, 2015
Subtitled as a memoir, Books (Simon and Schuster, 2008), is about McMurtry's love of all things book. He tells of his first book collection (19 titles in a cardboard box, gifted to him as a youngster) and the impact it had on him as a reader and later collector. As an editor and publisher and McMurtry fan, I found his book about books most interesting. McMurtry is a self-taught expert in the business of being an antiquarian bookman. His narrative--delivered in brief chapter spurts of sometimes less than a page, and sometimes unabashedly indulgent--shares his knowledge about the used-book business and provides a neat history of key players and intrigue from the past several decades. I learned it was not unusual for a book buyer like McMurtry to purchase a thousand or more books in a day, or to bid on complete personal libraries or even on the stock of a peer bookseller. The trickiest part seems to have been figuring out how to load all the new-old books into whatever car he was driving.
Having walked a few aisles in Booked Up, McMurtry's several-building-bookstore located in his childhood town of Archer City, TX, and having even chatted it up a bit with McMurtry as he sat behind a small table, re-pricing old books, I was amazed that one man (or one enterprise) would have so many books. Mostly, I wondered why. Books is a glimpse into the obsession, the treasure hunt for that perfectly rendered copy of prose or poetry. I believe McMurtry is in the business for the books, not the money, although the cash flow is at times considerable.
McMurtry's modus operandi has been to spend the most money at times when the bookselling business was in a slump. But recently, in August of 2012, he decided to sell. Not everything, of course, but thousands of books in auction. Here's a link to a neat write-up with photos of the event at the Pretty Book blog: http://aprettybook.com/2012/08/14/boo...
I have to wonder if McMurtry's auction indicates that, contrary to media reports, this is a good time for booksellers, since he is selling instead of buying. Or, does it mean that as an antiquarian bookseller now in his seventies, he is retiring the collection.
Having walked a few aisles in Booked Up, McMurtry's several-building-bookstore located in his childhood town of Archer City, TX, and having even chatted it up a bit with McMurtry as he sat behind a small table, re-pricing old books, I was amazed that one man (or one enterprise) would have so many books. Mostly, I wondered why. Books is a glimpse into the obsession, the treasure hunt for that perfectly rendered copy of prose or poetry. I believe McMurtry is in the business for the books, not the money, although the cash flow is at times considerable.
McMurtry's modus operandi has been to spend the most money at times when the bookselling business was in a slump. But recently, in August of 2012, he decided to sell. Not everything, of course, but thousands of books in auction. Here's a link to a neat write-up with photos of the event at the Pretty Book blog: http://aprettybook.com/2012/08/14/boo...
I have to wonder if McMurtry's auction indicates that, contrary to media reports, this is a good time for booksellers, since he is selling instead of buying. Or, does it mean that as an antiquarian bookseller now in his seventies, he is retiring the collection.
June 30, 2010
Possibly entertaining mostly to people who love books, bookstores, and booksellers. I love all three (well, books, and bookstores more than booksellers.) It's really a collection of anecdotes about finding, buying, and selling with a look at the eccentrics and eccentricities of the trade. I have to add, I really love Larry McMurtry, and re-read Lonesome Dove every five years or so - same with watching the mini-series which I consider the best thing ever made for TV.
Here's one reason why I love McMurtry:
In writing about his own works: "None, to my regret, were great, although my long western Lonesome Dove was very popular - the miniseries made from it was even more popular. Popularity, of course, is not the same as greatness."
And here's another: writing about Mohamed Al Fayed - "...whose hopes died in a tunnel in Paris in 1997, when his son Dodi was killed in a car wreck, along with Diana, Princess of Wales, and the driver, Henri Paul." He mentions the driver! Most writers wouldn't - who cares about a servant? McMurtry mentions the driver, by name - that's a class act!
Here's one reason why I love McMurtry:
In writing about his own works: "None, to my regret, were great, although my long western Lonesome Dove was very popular - the miniseries made from it was even more popular. Popularity, of course, is not the same as greatness."
And here's another: writing about Mohamed Al Fayed - "...whose hopes died in a tunnel in Paris in 1997, when his son Dodi was killed in a car wreck, along with Diana, Princess of Wales, and the driver, Henri Paul." He mentions the driver! Most writers wouldn't - who cares about a servant? McMurtry mentions the driver, by name - that's a class act!
September 15, 2008
You will never guess what this book is about! Okay, fine, it’s about McMurtry’s second career as a bookseller and book scout. The emphasis is really on the minutiae of the bookselling biz—details about McMurtry’s life or his writing are scarce. He skips around a lot, too, both in time and in subject, so one short chapter may follow on another short chapter about something completely different. Thus it is not a particularly focused or well-organized book, though I still found it a charming one. But then I’m a bit of a book scout myself (even though I mostly just look for things I want to read rather than books I feel will be valuable), so the topic is one close to my heart. However, hardcore bibliophiles like myself are likely to be the only ones captivated by this scattered narrative.
Want to read
November 3, 2011 A book for book lovers written by a book lover
Books is a memoir that traces McMurtry's life stages through his relationship with books--thousands and thousands of them, those in the library of the university he attended, those in his personal library (upwards of 30,000 volumes) McMurtry's Books uses stories about book-collecting, book-selling, and book-enjoying as milestones for his autobiography. His memoir not only tells us something about his own life,. In "Books: A Memoir" (259 pages), McMurtry brings his tales of how he fell in love reading books, growing up in Archer City, TX, and how that love eventually lead to becoming a book scout, dealer and eventually book store owner,.
Books is a memoir that traces McMurtry's life stages through his relationship with books--thousands and thousands of them, those in the library of the university he attended, those in his personal library (upwards of 30,000 volumes) McMurtry's Books uses stories about book-collecting, book-selling, and book-enjoying as milestones for his autobiography. His memoir not only tells us something about his own life,. In "Books: A Memoir" (259 pages), McMurtry brings his tales of how he fell in love reading books, growing up in Archer City, TX, and how that love eventually lead to becoming a book scout, dealer and eventually book store owner,.
January 29, 2021
I've never read McMurtry's books but picked this one up because ... y'know, books. Subtitled "A Memoir" it rambles and wanders as he relates a life in the book buying and selling business. He seems a little melancholic and enervated. He was 72 when it was published and it feels like an end of life work (though he's still living). He describes his early introduction to reading in a non-reading family and his early days as a writer, but mostly it's anecdotes about buying and selling antiquarian and collectible books, with bits of interesting trivia dropped in ("Somerset Maugham abridged ten great novels because ... they were, in his view, just too long." An interesting writing exercise if nothing else). Having handled a million books, he acknowledges the many great books (and bargains) he's missed out on. Not for McMurty readers, I think, more for those who find little about books not worth reading. I don't collect first editions but I can understand the feeling of those who do, having spent far too much time in thrift stores and charity shops looking for the books I want to read. McMurtry seems more interested in the book trade than in writing and states, "When I'm writing I often spin out my daily pages as rapidly as possible, in order to get back to whatever I am reading." I can relate.
May 30, 2023
This really wasn't so much a memoir as a bunch of rambling, often unrelated anecdotes about McMurtry's bookselling days. Hardly any of his own work got more than a passing mention and he flitted from subject to subject, name dropping all along the way (if it's still name dropping when I don't have the vaguest idea who these people were). There were several amusing stories and a few great thoughts/commentary on books, reading or the state of the world. But overall, it was a disjointed and rather dull read.
October 30, 2024
”One reason I’ve hung on to book selling it that it’s progressive - the opposite of writing, pretty much. Eventually all novelists, if they persist too long, get worse. No reason to name names, since no one is spared. Writing great fiction involves some combination of energy and imagination that cannot be energised or realised forever. Strong talents can simply exhaust their gift, and they do.
Book selling, though, being based on acquired knowledge, is progressive. At least, that seems to be the case with the great dealers. The longer they deal and the more they know, the better books they handle.”
I think the love of reading - of books, even - is general enough to not be considered as a specialist subject. This memoir, despite its title, is far more than that, though. McMurtry writes of something far more specialised and rarefied: the life of a dedicated book buyer and seller. Being an antiquarian bookseller - or “bookman,” which is the term that McMurtry prefers - is clearly more of an identity than a profession, although it is that, too. McMurtry became a “book scout” when he was a college student in the 1950s and he remained a dedicated book buyer and seller until his death in 2021. If nothing else, this account of a life dedicated to the book business should convince you that it is a venerable profession - and one that manages to endure despite the many changes in the book selling business (not to mention reading practice) over the years.
Although McMurtry was fairly well-known as a bookseller - at least within the bookstore world - he was much better known as the writer of more than 30 books, at least five of which became successful films. After reading this bookish “memoir,” I was astounded at the energy of the man. In essence, he managed to conduct what most other normal humans would regard to be three separate careers: as a bookseller, as a writer, and not least of all, as a reader. Yes, I would count “reader” as a career of sorts - at least the way that McMurtry did it, and certainly because of the way it enriched and informed his other two professions. Indeed, he claims - in this memoir - that “book selling way mainly a way to finance my reading.”
Although there is something of a narrative arc in the sense that the book’s short anecdotal chapters progress in chronological order, it does mostly consist of vignettes about different books, bookshops, book dealers and book transactions. (I wonder if he kept detailed notes of the above; if not, his memory is formidable!) I would say, therefore, that the book’s contents are highly specialised in terms of interest. In other words, this book is certainly not for everyone. For me, though - also a reader, writer and book buyer, albeit of the most amateurish kind, and a big Larry McMurtry fan to boot - this memoir had a definite charm, and an enjoyable poignance, too.
This memoir was published in 2008, so to read it after McMurtry’s death does rather underline the point he makes at the end of the book when he details all of the defunct bookshops whose collections he absorbed into his own. In fact, as soon as I finished reading this book I started an Internet search on what happened to McMurtry’s own personal library, not to mention his vast professional one, after his death. So much of this book is a story of the ebb and flow of books, as if every reader and book buyer was connected by some great ever-flowing river. If you are the sort of reader who also cares about the provenance of the book - its own personal story, its history and ownership - then perhaps this memoir is for you.
”As workers in an ancient trade we feel, with Whitman, part of all that we have met; and those that we have met in book selling are part of us in the most tangible of ways: their books, though in diminishing numbers (we hope), remain on our shelves.
We feel Booked Up to be a kind of anthology of bookshops past - or, that is, past and ongoing.”
May 2, 2010
I went through a Larry McMurtry phase when I was in early adolescence, so I was kind of absently stoked to read this. Then I read it, and let me say this: I've not had a reading experience like it. If you'd like to be bored to a point where it almost becomes interesting again -- fixed with a boredom that is nearly awe -- you may want to think about reading about McMurtry's life not as a writer (or even, really, as a person per se) but as an antiquarian "bookman" (the title becomes a lot less neat when it's not about writing books, somehow). You feel undereducated... but that actually feels okay, maybe even good. You actively note that the author is elderly, and could maybe use an editor who wasn't also old and/or asleep: anecdotes are included with a dazzling disregard for relevance or interest, and stories, quips, turns of phrase are recycled repeatedly (it's like listening to a lengthy, erudite speech given by an Alzheimer's patient). In essence, you read the whole dull thing with exclamation points repeatedly popping up over your head: you can't believe this is happening/published/the guy who wrote so warmly about Flap and Emma et al!
June 30, 2016
I did not finish this and I was disappointed. Although the author talked a little bit about how books influenced his life since he was young, I felt like it was more about his book buying habits and book businesses. He threw some names here and some names there without elaborating much, then suddenly began a new chapter. Each chapter in this book is around 1.5-2 pages long (my copy was library hard cover) - weird!
September 16, 2021
Living in New York City, you wouldn't think that I would have to cross the Hudson River to visit my favorite second hand bookshop, but in fact I do. Nor would you think that that same used book store happens to be a large suburban Barnes and Noble. Many a crusty bookseller will, of course, consider such a confession something of a sacrilege, while for the more casual bibliophile there may be some confusion: about six Barnes and Noble stores around the country, an employee at their headquarters told me a few years ago, have a second hand sales area. (Drats if I've ever been able to find out the location of the other five!)
I enjoy that particular book store because the prices are cheap, especially if you are patient. They halve their prices on stale stock quarterly. But I also appreciate that they get some good books to begin with. To be sure they are what McMurtry would call a low end book shop, but a few years back about 50 books on the Spanish-American War, many of them focused on the associated battles in the Philippines, and the American War that followed in the Philippine Isles, showed up on the shelves. I bought all the cheapest ones right away and kept my fingers crossed that the most expensive ones (the top price for any of them was around $120) would be there still in six or even nine months time. Lo and behold, most of them were, though the manager of the section was savvy enough to not drop the most expensive books all the way down to $1. Still, I acquired a great collection on a part of the world, and a time in history that is of interest to me, owing to my own diplomatic service in Manila, for a very reasonable price. If you like hearing such stories, you'll appreciate McMurtry's memoir Books.
In fact, McMurtry, who owned a book store in the tony Georgetown district of Washington, DC for three decades, notes that bookselling in DC is enriched by the many collections of diplomatic families that make their way into the trade there. That's not surprising to me; it's easier to collect and own large amounts of books when someone else packs them up and pays the moving expenses whenever it's time to move on to your next country! But of course it's more than that. The U.S. Foreign Service and it's diplomatic counterparts the world over are nothing if not storied, literary institutions. Whenever I have the chance to mention this fact, which is not often, I like to crow that I've never had more thoughtful discussions of good books than I have had at U.S. embassy book clubs overseas, which of course are also very fine social events.
It's not just Americans serving overseas, of course, that are more book knowledgeable than their average compatriot. Once, while dining at a Thai restaurant, a fellow American diplomat (a Russian-speaking EUR hand) and myself were dining with the French chief of party for an international NGO. During the conversation, and I have no idea today what we were even discussing, all three of us dropped quotes: the Frenchman Tolstoy, my colleague Tennyson, and me Talleyrand (of whom I could only quote because I had been reading of him the evening before.) The exchange left me agog, the symmetry of places to people at our table, the T's, the fact is, such literary wit couldn't have been better written by Stoppard if he'd tried. If I didn't already know it--having worked closely with the Hollywood screenwriter who could quote Shakespeare at ridiculous length and who served as an advance for then-Vice President Biden's visit to Israel--that lunch proved to me the value of literary erudition in that rarified milieu of highly educated, worldly people that ply their trades abroad.
McMurtry gives the impression that, as a working class kid from Texas, he too experienced some of the same awe, specifically in learning to differentiate between the ways of the rich and the 'monied'. Some of his stories, to this end, are mildly interesting. But the real reason that book lovers [I dare say book lovers 'alone', judging from the poor ratings on Goodreads] will love this book is because of his passion for not only the materiality of books, but also his passion for actually reading them. Personally there's not one of the 1500 books in my own collection that I've paid money for without having designs on some day reading it. Obviously, when you have a personal collection of 28,000 books, like McMurtry did in 2008, and a bookshop with another 300,000 titles, you can hardly say the same. Even so, though, you get the sense that McMurtry would have if he could have.
One of the most poignant of the 109 chapters is 70, where he admits that sometime in his mid-70s (he became 'late' as the Ethiopians say earlier this year at the age of 87) he began to resent his collection of books. He doesn't elaborate much--the chapters are very short and the white space across the book as a whole is greater than in any other book I've read--but you get the sense that those books in his private library began, after some time, to laugh at him and his designs to read them all. I look at my own 1500 books, 10 percent of which I've read, and I already know that my collection will continue to grow in the three or four decades I have left, and that I will never read all of them.
For other amateur collectors and proto-book scouts like me, though, there are two good pieces of advice that come near the end. First, McMurtry shames those of us who like to write our names on the inside of book, and especially those who do it in pen. (I inscribe and annotate heavily on every book that I own and read, but always in pencil.) Better, go online and design a nice personal book plate and then affix those to your books with an adhesive that can be easily removed without damaging the book. He second piece of advice is to cull your books regularly. I'll be the first one to say that that can be hard to do. But it will over time result in a much better collection of books that can then migrate into the world of other readers, as mediated by the second hand book shops like McMurtry's Booked Up, and other lesser species of the same, even the odd Barnes and Noble. (c) Jeffrey L. Otto, September 14, 2021
I enjoy that particular book store because the prices are cheap, especially if you are patient. They halve their prices on stale stock quarterly. But I also appreciate that they get some good books to begin with. To be sure they are what McMurtry would call a low end book shop, but a few years back about 50 books on the Spanish-American War, many of them focused on the associated battles in the Philippines, and the American War that followed in the Philippine Isles, showed up on the shelves. I bought all the cheapest ones right away and kept my fingers crossed that the most expensive ones (the top price for any of them was around $120) would be there still in six or even nine months time. Lo and behold, most of them were, though the manager of the section was savvy enough to not drop the most expensive books all the way down to $1. Still, I acquired a great collection on a part of the world, and a time in history that is of interest to me, owing to my own diplomatic service in Manila, for a very reasonable price. If you like hearing such stories, you'll appreciate McMurtry's memoir Books.
In fact, McMurtry, who owned a book store in the tony Georgetown district of Washington, DC for three decades, notes that bookselling in DC is enriched by the many collections of diplomatic families that make their way into the trade there. That's not surprising to me; it's easier to collect and own large amounts of books when someone else packs them up and pays the moving expenses whenever it's time to move on to your next country! But of course it's more than that. The U.S. Foreign Service and it's diplomatic counterparts the world over are nothing if not storied, literary institutions. Whenever I have the chance to mention this fact, which is not often, I like to crow that I've never had more thoughtful discussions of good books than I have had at U.S. embassy book clubs overseas, which of course are also very fine social events.
It's not just Americans serving overseas, of course, that are more book knowledgeable than their average compatriot. Once, while dining at a Thai restaurant, a fellow American diplomat (a Russian-speaking EUR hand) and myself were dining with the French chief of party for an international NGO. During the conversation, and I have no idea today what we were even discussing, all three of us dropped quotes: the Frenchman Tolstoy, my colleague Tennyson, and me Talleyrand (of whom I could only quote because I had been reading of him the evening before.) The exchange left me agog, the symmetry of places to people at our table, the T's, the fact is, such literary wit couldn't have been better written by Stoppard if he'd tried. If I didn't already know it--having worked closely with the Hollywood screenwriter who could quote Shakespeare at ridiculous length and who served as an advance for then-Vice President Biden's visit to Israel--that lunch proved to me the value of literary erudition in that rarified milieu of highly educated, worldly people that ply their trades abroad.
McMurtry gives the impression that, as a working class kid from Texas, he too experienced some of the same awe, specifically in learning to differentiate between the ways of the rich and the 'monied'. Some of his stories, to this end, are mildly interesting. But the real reason that book lovers [I dare say book lovers 'alone', judging from the poor ratings on Goodreads] will love this book is because of his passion for not only the materiality of books, but also his passion for actually reading them. Personally there's not one of the 1500 books in my own collection that I've paid money for without having designs on some day reading it. Obviously, when you have a personal collection of 28,000 books, like McMurtry did in 2008, and a bookshop with another 300,000 titles, you can hardly say the same. Even so, though, you get the sense that McMurtry would have if he could have.
One of the most poignant of the 109 chapters is 70, where he admits that sometime in his mid-70s (he became 'late' as the Ethiopians say earlier this year at the age of 87) he began to resent his collection of books. He doesn't elaborate much--the chapters are very short and the white space across the book as a whole is greater than in any other book I've read--but you get the sense that those books in his private library began, after some time, to laugh at him and his designs to read them all. I look at my own 1500 books, 10 percent of which I've read, and I already know that my collection will continue to grow in the three or four decades I have left, and that I will never read all of them.
For other amateur collectors and proto-book scouts like me, though, there are two good pieces of advice that come near the end. First, McMurtry shames those of us who like to write our names on the inside of book, and especially those who do it in pen. (I inscribe and annotate heavily on every book that I own and read, but always in pencil.) Better, go online and design a nice personal book plate and then affix those to your books with an adhesive that can be easily removed without damaging the book. He second piece of advice is to cull your books regularly. I'll be the first one to say that that can be hard to do. But it will over time result in a much better collection of books that can then migrate into the world of other readers, as mediated by the second hand book shops like McMurtry's Booked Up, and other lesser species of the same, even the odd Barnes and Noble. (c) Jeffrey L. Otto, September 14, 2021
December 27, 2018
This is a memoir of Larry McMurtry's life primarily as a seller and collector of books. He weaves in his experiences as a writer of both books and a adapter screenplay writer. He intertwines the stories of the characters, locations, and events in his life that ended up in his books.
It's also interesting to read about how serious book collectors and booksellers curate their collections. I came away with a list of books I now want to read based on his discussion of them in this book.
It's also interesting to read about how serious book collectors and booksellers curate their collections. I came away with a list of books I now want to read based on his discussion of them in this book.
February 17, 2024
Wow. I literally just got this book earlier today, and it's done!! This was the first binge reading adventure I've had in quite a while. The author, best known for his western themed books, does a great job in covering much ground briskly in this memoir. Until recently, I didn't even know McMurtry was a bookseller. This volume is a great homage to the bookselling trade, as well as a behind the scenes look at what is now almost a lost calling. A very good read!!!
April 12, 2023
I'm going to be honest - I started reading this as part of a library reading challenge. I don't like memoirs, and I don't care about every bookstore in the nation, which it feels like I was reading about. So this book wasn't for me. However, if those things are your jam, you'll probably like this.
September 23, 2023
I was hoping for more about the books he read, instead of the books he bought & sold, but I enjoy books about books, and added a number of titles to my impossible to achieve to-read list.
December 18, 2024
Larry McMurty besides being a reputed author ( Lonesome Dove , Brokeback Mountain etc ) was an antiquarian book seller . In this book , he has talked about his passion for books and building his own home library of 28thousand titles . He has also narrated his experiences of collecting and selling books at his stores (in Texas , Washington DC etc ) . A thoroughly enjoyable book on books ( which I coincidentally found in the antiquarian section of a reputed bookstore in Bangalore - serendipity ? )
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