Here at The Private Library we love independent booksellers. (For a list of independent booksellers in your area, go to the right hand column of this blog and click on the appropriate organization under Regional U.S. Independent Booksellers Associations.)
We like 'em if they're big, and we like 'em if they're small. We like 'em if they're musty and crusty, and we like 'em if they're clean and well-mannered. We like 'em when you have to navigate teetering piles of books to even find their shelves, and we like 'em when you can immediately find the books in which you're interested. We like 'em in the bad parts of town, and we like 'em in the good parts of town, and we even like 'em if they're peddling their wares from pushcarts on the quays down by the fishmongers:
Of course, with the advent of bookselling on the Internet, and the appearance of super-mega-colossus booksellers like Amazon, many independent booksellers have disappeared. Many more have passed away. In just the past few years many of the great independent booksellers of the twentieth century have shuffled off their mortal coils: H. P. Kraus, Sam Weller, Madeleine Stern, Pierre Berès....
All of this notwithstanding, independent bookselling is not dead--not even close! Accordingly, The Private Library plans to feature the occasional post about independent booksellers that it has been our privilege and honor to have encountered over the past four+ decades. And we hope our readers will join us. If an independent bookseller has been a special part of your own book collecting experience, please consider sharing your experience with our readers....
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