Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller

It's my belief that anyone worth knowing enjoys spending time in a bookshop.

Hell hath no fury, they say, like a man treated the same way as he treats women.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that collecting books is much more than a hobby. The sheer amount of space required to house most book collections means that whoever shares your living area needs to be very understanding, or more ideally a co-conspirator, because the rest of their lives will be spent making room for your incredibly invasive pastime, until one day they trip on a folio and plummet to their doom down a staircase.

Sotheran's has a strictly No Nazis policy. Nazis don’t get to have nice things like books or bookshops.

It’s my belief that anyone worth knowing enjoys spending time in a bookshop.

There is something about geriatric men which attracts them to dangerous ladders.

If it looks like a goose, honks like a goose and steps like a goose, then it’s probably a Nazi, and there’s honestly only one kind of person who complains when I say ‘I don't sell books to racists' whatever they are calling themselves right now.

Being open about who you are can be a little scary, but I think that after you’ve explored your first dungeon, or been hounded through a forest by an unknown threat, you begin to worry less about the approval of others and more about whether you remembered to bring a torch.

Early one morning, which is to say about five minutes before noon...

I think one has to be guided by the cardinal rule which supersedes all others: one does not sell books to Nazis.

This was the Southeran's hush, that strange, oppressive atmosphere generated around scholarly people who want mothing more than to be left alone with books but are doomed to interact with members of the public.

The sheer amount of space required to house most book collections means that whoever shares your living area needs to be very understanding, or more ideally a co-conspirator, because the rest of their lives will be spent making room for your incredibly invasive pastime, until one day they trip on a folio and plummet to their doom down a staircase.

There’s a hunger about book people, and anyone who gets involved with old books. To follow a path so peculiar, with so few opportunities, and with no real prospects for wealth or prestige, I think you have to have a fickle relationship with rationality.

I scurried through the halls trying not to feel intimidated by the walls lined with pictures of elegant people trapped in moments of extreme contortion. You almost felt like their hips were following you as you moved around the room.

they purchase an old book. It might seem innocuous, but this is the first in thirty-nine ineluctable steps towards being a ninety-year-old hermit in a house full of books, complaining that your ungrateful children do not appreciate your Library.

There’s something quintessentially human about the need to be around books, and in taking comfort in their presence.

All anyone can do is take reasonable precautions. Keep the books away from fire. Don’t throw them in a puddle. And remember to take delight in them.

I think in order to be a really successful book dealer you probably have to have a gambler’s spirit, but I think I’d much rather be moderately successful than suffer the kind of scrutiny placed on the spectacular.

There’s something wistful about old books when they are gathered in one place. They have a faintly unsatisfied smell, as if they’re all distantly aware that they’ve missed their chance to be a worldwide smash hit.

More comfortingly, however, no prior experience was necessary, and within a day I’d received a call asking me to attend an interview with the manager. On the day of the interview, I was early – in the days before I became involved in books I frequently was.