{"id":36866,"date":"2020-05-22T06:00:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T11:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=36866"},"modified":"2020-05-12T16:14:57","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T21:14:57","slug":"love-death-rare-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/love-death-rare-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Love, Death & Rare Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Robert Hellenga’s latest is told from the point of view of Gabe Johnson, the last in a line of booksellers. His grandfather and father operated a Chicago institution, Chas. Johnson & Sons, a bookstore and rare book dealer. If you’re interested in learning arcane details about the physical book – such as binding, end papers, foxing, plates, tooling and watermarks – Love, Death & Rare Books<\/em><\/strong><\/a> is for you. As is usual with Hellenga’s books, there are a lot of references to the classics. Erudite throwaways about French literature, \u00a0Native American rarities, sailing, shipping, the Great Lakes and philosophy abound.<\/p>\n

The first part of the book is set in Chicago – from mid-century to the early 2000’s, when independent bookstores were battling chains and then online sellers. It ends on the shores of Lake Michigan, where Gabe starts over in a new venture, adapting to a new way of selling books, a new part of the country, an idiosyncratic house and its previous owner. Throughout, there is rich evocation of the natural world, geographical landmarks, businesses and neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Hellenga is from Galesburg, and it’s fun to pick up on references you’d recognize if you lived in central Illinois, or the Quad Cities. A coffee shop in the town where Gabe eventually settles is named after “Innkeeper’s” (a marvelous cafe and store in Galesburg), and a municipal worker in Gabe’s new town embezzles city funds so she can buy expensive, purebred horses, not unlike a similar occurrence in Dixon.<\/p>\n

There are always many layers and levels of enjoyment to be found in Hellenga’s novels, and this one certainly follows in that tradition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Hellenga’s latest is told from the point of view of Gabe Johnson, the last in a line of booksellers. His grandfather and father operated a Chicago institution, Chas. Johnson & Sons, a bookstore and rare book dealer. If you’re interested in learning arcane details about the physical book –[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":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[3252,3034,399,4070],"class_list":["post-36866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-books","tag-bookstores","tag-chicago","tag-rare-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-9AC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36866","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=36866"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36882,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36866\/revisions\/36882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}