{"id":30282,"date":"2017-02-14T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=30282"},"modified":"2017-02-11T08:45:38","modified_gmt":"2017-02-11T14:45:38","slug":"bibliophilia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/bibliophilia\/","title":{"rendered":"Bibliophilia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Bibliophilia<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, by N. John Hall, is an epistolary novel and, even though the correspondence is via email, it could just as well be letters that arrive by mail\u00a0. Larry Dickerson\u00a0develops relationships\u00a0with Christie’s auction house\u00a0staff, academics and other book experts as he educates himself about the art of book collecting. His enthusiasm is contagious; he isn’t afraid of appearing na\u00efve or uneducated. He asks the questions that the reader would ask, and the answers he receives are a mixture of the personal and the professional.<\/p>\n

Some of their respect and interest may be due to the fact that\u00a0Larry is newly rich, having\u00a0sold his great-great grandfather’s correspondence\u00a0with some noted Victorian authors for\u00a0\u00a0$400,000 – a portion of which he\u00a0 plans to invest in collecting rare books. Larry always tries to tie his collecting\u00a0to something he has an interest in,\u00a0so he begins\u00a0with Victorians such as Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope. Along the way, he learns about\u00a0 printing and publishing history – in both the U.S. and England, condition, inscriptions and book jackets – all of which affect the value of\u00a0 books, whether they are first editions or not.<\/p>\n

Soon, his correspondence leads him to New Yorker<\/strong><\/em><\/a> writers and cartoonists; he begins to collect J.D. Salinger,\u00a0Roth, Updike, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, and others. It’s fun to get a quick overview of these authors, as well as famed New Yorker editors Harold Ross and William Shawn.<\/p>\n

There is a subplot about fraud in the world of rare books – an entertaining way to learn about the underbelly of unscrupulous book\u00a0dealers. Bibliophilia<\/strong> <\/em><\/a>is an interesting mix of a sort of superficial, middlebrow learning and literary enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bibliophilia, by N. John Hall, is an epistolary novel and, even though the correspondence is via email, it could just as well be letters that arrive by mail\u00a0. Larry Dickerson\u00a0develops relationships\u00a0with Christie’s auction house\u00a0staff, academics and other book experts as he educates himself about the art of book collecting. His[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,1,8],"tags":[4069,3252,4070],"class_list":["post-30282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reference","category-staff-picks","tag-book-collectors","tag-books","tag-rare-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-7Sq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30282"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30295,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30282\/revisions\/30295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}