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Nov 03, 2011

Bill marked it as to-read

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" More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 25, 2008

Nick rated it:

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 More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2009

Sean rated it:

No one can deny that the antiquarian book trade is not what it once was. The advent of the World Wide Web and other technological developments forever changed all facets of the book industry, including its secondhand offshoot. Larry McMurtry has lived through these changes, as both a writer and a bookseller. This book is McMurtry's memoir of a life lived among books: reading, writing, scouting, buying, selling. I snatched this up at my local library branch, immediately recognizing the wall of bo More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 14, 2008

Kelly rated it:

Larry McMurtry is one of my all-time favorite authors, but Books: A Memoir was pointless and just plain awful. I picked up the book thinking that it would be about books that influenced him or the books he has written, but instead it is almost entirely about his work as a scout, purchasing books and searching for rare editions of books. It was like reading a book about someone else's flea market trips.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 15, 2008

Trin rated it:

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. B More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2008

Jacki rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 30, 2010

Richard rated it:

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 reas More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 14, 2010

Richard rated it:

Larry McMurtry (LM) writes about the books in his life like the laconic Texan that he is. In "Books", he writes in a meandering fashion about some of the more memorable books he's bought and sold as the proprietor of 'Booked Up', a book shop LM runs with his partner Marcia (?) in Archer City (where the hells' that?) Texas. Think of the town that Peter Bogdonovich set the film "The Last Picture Show" and that is Archer City. The one thing that AC has going for it is that it's More...

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Dec 06, 2009

Erik rated it:

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 nostalgi More...

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Oct 14, 2009

Renee rated it:

I confess up front I’m a loyal fan of Mr. McMurtry, so I won’t attempt an unbiased review of Books: A Memoir, except to say this is not a memoir in the traditional sense, but a series of essays detailing Mr. McMurtry’s love of books – reading them and hunting them down, and eventually amassing a collection that numbers in the tens of thousands.

The history of his career as a collector and antiquarian bookseller are interesting (and educative: if at some point you begin collecting boo More...

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Jul 01, 2009

Elizabeth rated it:

McMurtry's memoir of his life as a book scout/dealer is an interesting but conflicted account of his broader relationship to literature. As a writer, McMurtry makes interesting distinctions between his relationship to generating prose and his proclivity to collect it in bound volumes. For instance, McMurtry insists on the cumulative (and progressive) knowledge of book dealers (they only get better as time goes on), whereas he believes writers (himself very much included) get worse. He includes s More...

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Feb 01, 2012

Matthew rated it:

I am pretty sure I first heard about this on public radio before recently coming across the audiobook version in my public library while seeking out something to accompany me on my commute. I enjoyed it despite the portions where it started to reminded me of "The Education of Henry Adams", another much longer book that I have tried to listen to in the car that drones on with much name dropping and dry narration regarding personalities and social circles that would only interest a speci More...

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Dec 21, 2010

Lobstergirl rated it:

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 s More...

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Aug 29, 2010

Doreen rated it:

This book was nothing like what I thought it would be. I imagined a memoir about a childhood, devoid of books, and whatever happened after that. McMurtry only briefly describes his bookless, childhood home life. Instead, he proceeds to describe his life as a book buyer/scout/seller. I was initially confused, wondering what the heck I was reading! Once, I adjusted to the subject matter, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was introduced to a world of books and their collectors, about which I had no pr More...

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May 01, 2010

Sarah rated it:

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 More...

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Mar 04, 2010

Katie rated it:

I was expecting something very different than what I got from Larry McMurtry’s BOOKS. I was expecting a memoir chronicling his love of books. And, to some extent, this was provided – but it was too personal. McMurtry’s love of books rests mostly in his love of being a book collector/buyer/trader. In addition to his professions as author and teacher, he was also a book buyer, venturing around the nation, and even the world, to find collectible books. In theory, this would make an exciting memoir. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Despite McMurtry's well-deserved reputation as a writer, including a Pulitzer Prize and more than a handful of best sellers, critics are unsure about his latest effort. They cite it as an uneven volume that glosses over some important characters and anecdotes (or, conversely, delves a bit too much into the details of book collecting) and doesn't advance its purported mission of offering a "memoir" of the reticent author's life in books. Some of the vignettes seem to have been dashed of

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Nov 17, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

I found Books fascinating. I enjoyed being introduced to the world of scouting and selling books. I was thrilled with the concept of the book.

Most of my friends didn't care for Books, and from their comments as well as the comments on GoodReads that are 1 star, I think that most people who were disappointed in it were disappointed for the same reason. The readers expected Books to be about books that influenced McMurtry as an author. There was nothing like that at all in the memo More...

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Aug 20, 2010

Christine rated it:

Mr. McMurtry is a celebrated novelist (Leaving Cheyenne, The Last Picture Show), an Academy Award winner screenwriter (The Last Picture Show, Hud) and a well-known bookseller. As the title suggests this book is focused on his career as a bookseller. He divulges quite a few “insider” secrets about the book trade outside the world of major retailers and drops a few names in the process. The mention of some books that he has bought and then sold made my mouth water. How can one sell books like More...

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Sep 04, 2009

Mark rated it:

I've read several of Larry McMurtry's novels, and definitely like his son James' music, and I am also a bibliophile. So you could say, I guess, I was heavily predisposed to enjoy this book. And enjoy it I did, and read it in one compulsive gulp today. Over the years I was aware that Mr. McMurtry was involved in the antiquarian book trade, and in fact operated near the top of the hierarchy in that world. This book, as the title indicates, is a chronicle told as memoir (time, in other words, shift More...

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Jan 06, 2009

Neil rated it:

This book was not what I expected and I think it will take a while to sort out my reactions to it.

McMurtry has long been a favorite author of mine, and I had high expectations for this memoir, but it's not really about his writing life. Even more surprisingly, it's not very revealing about his reading life. What it does reveal, I'm not sure I wanted to hear. In particular, the bombshell that he grew tired of fiction in the late 80s and doesn't really read it anymore was a bit stunnin More...

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Mar 19, 2009

Melissa rated it:

I enjoyed this book. It is all about McMurtry's experiences as an antique bookdealer or second hand book dealer. He writes about his love of books, not so much as an author, but as a reader.

This book was written, I believe, before the success of Amazon's Kindle but he stills writes about how technology has changed the book business.

McMurtry writes about how libraries have changed, books are no longer prominient, it's the computers you see when you walk in. I knew this b More...

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Aug 05, 2011

Bob rated it:

I often pick library books like I shop for underwear: enter the building (library/Kohl’s), focus, head down to the target area (current releases or stack/department), grab what appeals (cover, title, author recognition/color, pattern, brand) , one eighty and retrace my steps to the circulation desk/register, exchange pleasantries, consummate the transaction, and skedaddle.

Get home and –SURPRISE.

So it was with Books. I was expecting musings on and insights into his craft by a popular American a More...

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Jun 19, 2009

Stewart rated it:

Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite authors. A winner of a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar, McMurtry is the author of "The Last Picture Show," one of the great novels of growing up and small-town life. He wrote the creenplay to the 1971 movie of the same name directed by Peter Bagdanovich. A little-known fact about him is that he has been a collector of rare books for several decades and has run a bookstore, Booked Up, in Georgetown, D.C., 1970-87 and in Archer City, Texas, where he grew More...

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Nov 20, 2009

LynnB rated it:

McMurtry grew up up in a largely book-less environment at home until an older cousin brought him a box of books, which he devoured. This book tells his journey to becoming a book scout and collector. The book is full of anecdotes and observations about authors, readers and literature.

The negatives to the book were that many of the names he dropped of purchasers/sellers were either unknown to me or I just didn't care about them, even though I might like the story about them. Also, More...

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Mar 27, 2009

Keith rated it:

The Goodreads reviews of this book range from the lowest to the highest. After reading the book I can understand why. If you are at all interested in the antiquarian book trade, it's glorious past and uncertain future, then you will breeze through this "memoir." It's a treat if you have any interest in this area and somewhat puzzling if you don't. It is somewhat unorganized and scattered but nevertheless an entertaining look back at a fading era. McMurty's reflections on the future of More...

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Jul 02, 2010

Timothy rated it:

An interesting but ultimately unsatisfying memoir by a writer who prefers to remain personally opaque. As he says at the end, "I've chosen, for the most part, to keep this memoir personality-free." It's at its best when he talks about growing up a book-starved child in a book-free homestead shack and what happened when a cousin bound for service in World War II came by the house and left a box containing 19 books. The section in which he first attends college and discovers the almost More...

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Dec 15, 2011

dee rated it:

Now this guy loves books. Not only a prolific reader and an amazing writer but a collector too. Very interesting to hear about book scouts and the price of what some of the really obscure works of literature go for. At one point his partner was erasing Larry McMurtry's name from his own books to sell only to find out a little later his name made them more valuable. So do you erase the names or not? Interesting book for you book collectors out there. He asks some great questions about the lo More...

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Sep 11, 2009

Gail rated it:

This is somewhat disjointed: it doesn't flow well, especially at the beginning. It's a leisurely journey through McMurtry's life with book collecting. I had a bit of help reading it because I'd read a mystery called "Booked to Die" by a bookman named John Dunning, which provided much background knowledge abuot bookselling and booksellers, and this fleshed out the sort of skeletal format of McMurtry's book. It is interesting and chatty and intimate, but the reader is left wanting much m More...

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Jun 18, 2011

MaryZee rated it:

This book is easily readable due to the short chapters. He begins the story of his bookish ways by telling about his early days growing up on a ranch in Archer City, Texas. His first exposure to books (the family was more prone to sitting around, telling stories) was when his cousin went off to war and gave young Larry a box of 19 books before he left. The family soon moved to town, where he was they bought a set of World Book encylopedias and a subscription to the Reader's Digest. When he w More...

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