A used bookdealer's weblog

Archive: Used Bookdealer

After the generous mention of this weblog on BookFinder I posted something like this, then junked it. Not sure why.

Anirvan's pointer has rippled out into blogspace and I find lots of folks have kindly added this weblog to their blogrolls and links lists. Seems a sweet spot in this weblog's history to say what I'm up to in this slice of my website.

Books Do Furnish A Room the weblog is one of six that I hastily type out. Sometimes too hastily since I MS Word doesn't catch the failures of tense and sense. There's no good excuse for that so I won't offer one.

The other five weblogs address:

• Life as a cheerful if alarmed sodomite
• The tasks of having weblogs and a website
• Scraps about the culture, often low that please me
• Sexuality laughable and morbid aspects
• An anti-theist's impatience with believers

In writing about days selling used books I'm inclined to the anecdotal and minor. No pretence to mercantile cunning or merchant's wisdom, bibliographic scholarship. I'm just here to entertain myself, rest from the day.

Books Do Furnish A Room opened in 1983 here in Durham, NC, home of Duke University. Aside from the period when Stanley Fish ran Duke's English Department Duke students haven't been the best used book customers: they are accountants and doctors.

The shop's name comes from the 10th novel in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Originally the shop was nakedly called “Books/Records/Comics.” We found that the mere word comics kept people away.

Powell's detached prose has always given me keen pleasure. Once we knew the store's name had to change. Books Do Furnish A Room was an obvious choice (didn't realize we'd attract the home décor critters who buy books to make themselves look cultivated).

No need to add to the endless parade of Book/Reader's nooks, ends, corners. Nor to bulk up the numbers of used bookshops with weakly ironic, pompous, names; much less the Cheap Books A Gazillion kind of thing.

I've written a little about the shop's early days if you feel like digging in the archives.

Weblogs, true of all writings, are filtered through the writer's personal experiences and individual quirks. You are welcome to add your assent or demurral. Exasperatingly hostile crap is sent to oblivion. Otherwise I do my best to respond to comments, though some stand well enough on their own. Lastly, I know about the assorted online forums and mailing lists where bookdealers congregate. I'd rather not add to the ill humor and earnestness. Maybe I'll bitch about the fees and policies one day. Anybody who entitles an entry “The shocking truth of media mail abuse exposed!” is having a lark, nothing more.