A Day In The Country

Yesterday might have been considered only a fair day for book buying, but somehow it felt like a much better one. We hit the road at seven a.m. to arrive at the first place by eight, the home of the woman who emailed me about the antiquarian books. I’m a city girl, born and bred, barely tolerant of suburbia and depressed by rural areas, so I was amazed to find myself charmed by the rustic life.  But I really liked the books’ owner who happens to be a friend of a friend’s. We “clicked” immediately, talking about books, cats, houses, writing, and of course our mutual friend. By the time we got going words tumbled around  us like the fall-out from a leaning tower of blocks. I was also taken by the fact that she’s a single woman living alone in a very old house and maintaining a barnful of chickens and donkeys in addition to three dogs and five cats while making a living as a freelance writer.

I do love an old house, but my taste tends to lean toward late 19^th century through the 1920’s, yet somehow the 1825 cottage had me wrapped around it’s pretty little newel post in two seconds flat. The interior was dim, but snug and elegant, with oriental rugs stretched out casually on old hardwood floors. Bookshelves lined the walls and a small graceful white fireplace commanded the living room. As we perused the shelves the owner sat on a tufted brown leather sofa and talked about her favorites. Unfortunately, most of the books, while good, were common and the only one I wanted, The Life and Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar from the early 1900’s (with photographs) had condition issues beyond my ability to cure. There was also supposed to have been a first edition of Gone with the Wind, but it turned out not to be one. It should have said May,1936 on the copyright page, but all it said was 1936. It also had condition issues and was missing its jacket, so I didn’t feel too bad passing it by. In the end I bought nothing and Eric got a few titles for the store for $30.

Our next stop was to her friend’s house which was only six miles away, but dropped us jarringly  back in suburbia. The fun part was that Eric knew him, as he’s a long time customer at the store. We had a great time unpacking boxes of books, but I laid claim to only one box,  plus two books from the My Travel Ship set in amazing condition. Eric bought the rest for the store, but we hadn’t brought the truck because we had no idea we’d be headed home loaded down, so we just repacked the books I got and stashed them  and one other large box in the car.

Just as we were about to close the hatch-back on Petey, the owner said, “Do you like genealogical stuff and old local history? We’ve got a ton of it, but we’re not ready to sell it yet. I just thought you might like to see it.”

Of course we would like to see it, so down to the very clean finished basement we trekked  and into a home office, the walls of which were lined with books. I took one look and felt like a character in a movie running dreamily into paradise in slow motion. Everywhere books flashed at me – bing! bing! bing! – all of them fabulous. One small section of shelf contained three Akron histories and a three volume Akron set, all of which I’ve sold in the past and all of which are very good. But even that was just a tiny fraction of what was there. We’re talking rows and rows and rows and rows of beautiful books. Some I knew and some I didn’t, but even the ones that were new to me wore their desirability like a diamond tiara. These were BOOKS – beautiful, gotta have, books! If they had been available I would have written a sizeable check faster than you can say First Edition, but of course that wasn’t possible. The family wants to go through the collection, take what they want, and sell the rest at some undertermined time.

All we could do is express our interest in them and let him know that even the leavings would be fine with us. Whether or not we get them remains to be seen, but I sure hope we do. In some ways it might have been better if we’d never seen them at all. But I don’t know. Lately I’ve been obsessed with the feeling that there’s nothing good out there anymore, so just knowing that somewhere an hour away there IS good stuff restores my hope that we’ll be able to find other good things too.

Maybe a drive in the country lives up to its reputation after all – even for a city girl.

The Book Buyer Blues

I need to play with the papers again. I really do. Three days into the new week and I’m already as jangly as a charm bracelet. I’d ordered fifteen books from ebay for stock, all of which finally showed up now in what at first glance appeared to be a mountain of fun. In case you haven’t guessed, “appeared” is the operative word here. By the time I finished opening the lot I felt as though I’d  slipped on a banana peel and catapulted head-first into Dante’s Inferno.

The first package showed up wet and the moisture had seeped through to the inside where it completely ruined the lower back corner of the book because the seller failed to provide interior protection for a box that had been used so many times it was as squeezable as a teddy bear. The second one was a soft cover book that could no longer close properly due to the fact that a thick bunch of newsletters (which were nice and relevant to the topic) had been stored inside it. Next came one peppered with holes from worm damage, followed by one on which the red inked upper edge had bleached to a mottled pink. To compound the problem on the latter the seller waited NINE days to ship it a nd then tried to extract more postage from me after I’d paid the invoice he sent me originally.  In this instance tried is the operative word.

Of the rest, only ONE truly lived up to its billing (see photo above) and this one's been here a week or two. This seller both described it and wrapped it like a pro but, wouldn’t you know, he’s the only one to get badly burned out of all these auctions. I’ve decided I’m going to send him another $10 because he truly earned it. Five other books proved to be reasonably good and the remaining six were good AFTER I made repairs which included new backing for a spine, pressing and weighting dog-eared pages, tipping in a loose page, and cleaning dirty covers. After a fairly good previous run, this time I hit at top speed a brick wall of sub-par sellers.

The point here is not my own annoyance, the repairs, and/or  the need to repackage and return unwanted books, but what the whole debacle says about the book business.  I strongly suspect  that the vast majority of these sellers know nothing about books and care even less about them. If I were the average reader buying these books online to either keep or give as gifts, I’d be pretty fed up by now because I wouldn’t  know how to make repairs and would lack both the time or inclination even if I did.  In fact, I might just decide that online book buying is more trouble than it’s worth. For sure I’d be afraid to buy on ebay. However, this is not a rant about ebay  – I could do that, but I won’t – because ebay itself is not the problem in this instance. The problem is that too many sellers regard books as rectangular little moneymakers that require next to no effort on their part.

Every time a book buyer ends up badly disappointed the entire business tarnishes a little more and we who devote our lives to the cause suffer for it. Mistakes happen – I know that – and I am very accommodating when they do. But there’s a big difference between an honest mistake and shoddy work. Sadly, so few sellers bother to showcase their wares which means that the buyer ends up having little choice but to take a chance and hold her breath. In the early days of the internet I certainly got my fair share of disappointing books, but none were ever as bad as what shows up these days dubbed as excellent or very good -- the exact words used to describe every item I bought. Interestingly  enough, all of the listings had at least one photo, but in the end it didn’t much matter. Despite the old saying, sometimes a picture  isn’t worth more than a thousand words.

Will I buy on ebay again? Yes, probably I will because I have had success.  Will I be more careful? I’d like to say yes, but I think I’ve already been careful, so I don’t know. Right now alI I can think of is the very scarce 19th century regimental history for which I paid $75. It's not even here yet and already I'm afraid to open it.