On the cusp of the Kindle era – a look back in…nostalgia?
I have two Kindles: a keyboard Kindle and a Kindle Fire. And I would never be without one or the other as they are small and handy enough to pop into my small, handy handbag. The smallness and handiness of my handbag is the result of a sudden realisation at some point that it was extremely inconvenient to drag around a large bag that had, somehow accumulated all on its own the stock of a small charity shop.
In doing so it had also acquired the characteristic of a Tardis. So it was an act of self-discipline that made me buy a handbag (shoulder-bag really) that was really quite small. The present bag is the third generation of such models of compactness. But what I hadn’t realised at the time of the great revelation was that this reticule was, in the very near future, going to accommodate a wing of a very personal library. And so it happened. And I’ve never looked back.
It has of course changed the status of the second-hand bookseller. But not destroyed it. Second-hand bookshop owners are a strange, motley breed, very often having been surgeons or marine biologists or gardeners before opting out, or opting sideways as it were. They can talk about many different subjects and will, given the chance.
It is the atmosphere of polymath scholarliness coming from both sellers and customers that pervades their shops. There is something about a second-hand bookshop that is sane, unhurried, leisured, giving the reader space and time to think and breathe as well as browse. And yes, of course you can browse in a regular bookshop but because of their ‘shelf-life’ policy, many bookshops have the atmosphere of a grocer’s shop.
I used to go to the bookshop owned by an American, Barry Klinger. Barry died a few years ago but in the thirty years he had been selling books he'd become an institution. He was one of those Americans who had drifted around Europe and washed up almost by chance on the shores of the Netherlands.
Even if he had not been erudite, you could still have called him an egg-head as that physical description suited him remarkably well as he sat at the counter next to the entrance greeting customers as they came in. If I went into the shop for a browse I would also go for a chat and, very occasionally, a moan. Yet whatever I had to say, although it was met with sympathy, it was always accompanied by a sharp analysis of what I was really going on about.
I knew him only superficially but I realised that he was not always an easy person to get on with. He cared little about what people thought of him, or so it seemed. He was capable of having a rant himself, once bitching about his mother ‘who doesn’t know or care where I am or whether I’m alive or dead.’ Once, when I told a friend I was going to pop into the bookshop she said, ‘Oh yes, an old sparring partner of mine from Berkeley’ and took me off to another bookshop as she didn’t feel in a mood to spit fire at Barry.
I don't think he was a typical second-hand bookseller because there is no typical example of this species. But whichever bookshop I was browsing in I always came away with books I had not considered buying before but suddenly seemed a good idea. So often have I come across a book I needed – just by chance.
However, you do have to be careful. I once bought a couple of books at another second-hand bookshop in Amsterdam and as they didn't have a specific book I needed I went to a regular bookshop nearby. This was some years ago and they still had a turnstile that peeped as I went in but I thought nothing of it. I looked for my book, didn’t find it and so went again through the turnstile. It peeped again. I stopped.
One of the assistants said very tetchily, ‘It did that when you entered.’ I walked off thinking they really ought to get their turnstile fixed. I must be a real country cousin because it was only when I was on the train back home did I realise that the books I had bought must have originally been stolen, then sold on.
For some time now there has been a mood of crepuscular melancholy at the demise of the second hand bookshop. Their days are numbered we are told, an all because of Internet selling and the birth of the Kindle or other e-reader. But does the message have to be so doom-laden?
Yes, I buy Kindle books but I also buy books through Amazon Marketplace, which is, in a way, a cyberspatial second-hand book fair. Living where I do, I find it extremely convenient to order books in this way and I would like to take issue with the assertion I often hear and read that the Internet means the death of businesses like Barry's. Need it be so?
I don't know if Barry Klinger used the Internet for selling. I don't think he did. Books just seemed to flow in and out of their accord, almost osmotically. But isn't using cyberspace simply a matter of adapting and surviving? I have bought books from sellers who have second-hand bookshops in Britain, America and different countries in mainland Europe.
Only last week I bought a book that has been out of date since 1960 from a man who has a small bookshop in Virginia, the week before a book from another small bookshop in the Scottish Highlands. These are only two examples of the many bookshops that are surviving because of internet selling. And there are many out-of-date books lurking around in back rooms that would otherwise never see the light of day, never be browsed or pounced upon by readers who had almost given up hope at finding what they wanted.
Of course there are disadvantages. The seller might not want to be bothered packing and posting. And he might miss chatting with the customers, although with a shop he still has his ‘real’ customers. All this is true. Nevertheless, it isn't always convenient to visit a shop in person, especially if you have to make a real journey.
And there can in fact be distinct advantages in postal selling. I have had and still have some lively e-mail correspondence with sellers. And is this sort of thing such an innovation? The manner of selling, through the internet is certainly new. But didn’t expats in days gone by used to send for books, the seller packing and posting them? And didn’t seller and customer very often exchange letters? If I can help a second-hand bookseller keep his business alive and at the same time acquire a book I’ve wanted for some time, it’s fine by me.
The fact that, owing to second hand bookshops and to the e-reader, reading material is more easily accessible can only be a good thing. Books, in whatever form, are up and on the march. I rather like the idea of a mass migration of books, not Displaced Books but rather wandering books, that travel from place to place as they are needed, like the peripatetic scholars of old.
An institution that is as old as the printing press can survive and flourish when it adapts itself to twenty-first century needs. Being aware of shifts in the way we see the world, and listening to warnings about an impending Dark Age make us aware that we have to not just salvage our intellectual heritage but to keep it alive and in motion.
In doing so it had also acquired the characteristic of a Tardis. So it was an act of self-discipline that made me buy a handbag (shoulder-bag really) that was really quite small. The present bag is the third generation of such models of compactness. But what I hadn’t realised at the time of the great revelation was that this reticule was, in the very near future, going to accommodate a wing of a very personal library. And so it happened. And I’ve never looked back.
It has of course changed the status of the second-hand bookseller. But not destroyed it. Second-hand bookshop owners are a strange, motley breed, very often having been surgeons or marine biologists or gardeners before opting out, or opting sideways as it were. They can talk about many different subjects and will, given the chance.
It is the atmosphere of polymath scholarliness coming from both sellers and customers that pervades their shops. There is something about a second-hand bookshop that is sane, unhurried, leisured, giving the reader space and time to think and breathe as well as browse. And yes, of course you can browse in a regular bookshop but because of their ‘shelf-life’ policy, many bookshops have the atmosphere of a grocer’s shop.
I used to go to the bookshop owned by an American, Barry Klinger. Barry died a few years ago but in the thirty years he had been selling books he'd become an institution. He was one of those Americans who had drifted around Europe and washed up almost by chance on the shores of the Netherlands.
Even if he had not been erudite, you could still have called him an egg-head as that physical description suited him remarkably well as he sat at the counter next to the entrance greeting customers as they came in. If I went into the shop for a browse I would also go for a chat and, very occasionally, a moan. Yet whatever I had to say, although it was met with sympathy, it was always accompanied by a sharp analysis of what I was really going on about.
I knew him only superficially but I realised that he was not always an easy person to get on with. He cared little about what people thought of him, or so it seemed. He was capable of having a rant himself, once bitching about his mother ‘who doesn’t know or care where I am or whether I’m alive or dead.’ Once, when I told a friend I was going to pop into the bookshop she said, ‘Oh yes, an old sparring partner of mine from Berkeley’ and took me off to another bookshop as she didn’t feel in a mood to spit fire at Barry.
I don't think he was a typical second-hand bookseller because there is no typical example of this species. But whichever bookshop I was browsing in I always came away with books I had not considered buying before but suddenly seemed a good idea. So often have I come across a book I needed – just by chance.
However, you do have to be careful. I once bought a couple of books at another second-hand bookshop in Amsterdam and as they didn't have a specific book I needed I went to a regular bookshop nearby. This was some years ago and they still had a turnstile that peeped as I went in but I thought nothing of it. I looked for my book, didn’t find it and so went again through the turnstile. It peeped again. I stopped.
One of the assistants said very tetchily, ‘It did that when you entered.’ I walked off thinking they really ought to get their turnstile fixed. I must be a real country cousin because it was only when I was on the train back home did I realise that the books I had bought must have originally been stolen, then sold on.
For some time now there has been a mood of crepuscular melancholy at the demise of the second hand bookshop. Their days are numbered we are told, an all because of Internet selling and the birth of the Kindle or other e-reader. But does the message have to be so doom-laden?
Yes, I buy Kindle books but I also buy books through Amazon Marketplace, which is, in a way, a cyberspatial second-hand book fair. Living where I do, I find it extremely convenient to order books in this way and I would like to take issue with the assertion I often hear and read that the Internet means the death of businesses like Barry's. Need it be so?
I don't know if Barry Klinger used the Internet for selling. I don't think he did. Books just seemed to flow in and out of their accord, almost osmotically. But isn't using cyberspace simply a matter of adapting and surviving? I have bought books from sellers who have second-hand bookshops in Britain, America and different countries in mainland Europe.
Only last week I bought a book that has been out of date since 1960 from a man who has a small bookshop in Virginia, the week before a book from another small bookshop in the Scottish Highlands. These are only two examples of the many bookshops that are surviving because of internet selling. And there are many out-of-date books lurking around in back rooms that would otherwise never see the light of day, never be browsed or pounced upon by readers who had almost given up hope at finding what they wanted.
Of course there are disadvantages. The seller might not want to be bothered packing and posting. And he might miss chatting with the customers, although with a shop he still has his ‘real’ customers. All this is true. Nevertheless, it isn't always convenient to visit a shop in person, especially if you have to make a real journey.
And there can in fact be distinct advantages in postal selling. I have had and still have some lively e-mail correspondence with sellers. And is this sort of thing such an innovation? The manner of selling, through the internet is certainly new. But didn’t expats in days gone by used to send for books, the seller packing and posting them? And didn’t seller and customer very often exchange letters? If I can help a second-hand bookseller keep his business alive and at the same time acquire a book I’ve wanted for some time, it’s fine by me.
The fact that, owing to second hand bookshops and to the e-reader, reading material is more easily accessible can only be a good thing. Books, in whatever form, are up and on the march. I rather like the idea of a mass migration of books, not Displaced Books but rather wandering books, that travel from place to place as they are needed, like the peripatetic scholars of old.
An institution that is as old as the printing press can survive and flourish when it adapts itself to twenty-first century needs. Being aware of shifts in the way we see the world, and listening to warnings about an impending Dark Age make us aware that we have to not just salvage our intellectual heritage but to keep it alive and in motion.
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