2
" The difference between a person who appreciates books, even loves them, and a collector is not only degrees of affection, I realized. For the former, the bookshelf is a kind of memoir; there are my childhood books, my college books, my favorite novels, my inexplicable choices. Many matchmaking and social networking websites offer a place for members to list what they're reading for just this reason: books can reveal a lot about a person. This is particularly true of the collector, for whom the bookshelf is a reflection not just of what he has read but profoundly of who he is: 'Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they can come alive in him; it is he who comes alive in them,' wrote cultural critic Walter Benjamin. "
― Allison Hoover Bartlett , The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
3
" After all, much of the fondness avid readers, and certainly collectors, have for their books is related to the books' physical bodies. As much as they are vessels for stories (and poetry, reference information, etc.), books are historical artifacts and repositories for memories-we like to recall who gave books to us, where we were when we read them, how old we were, and so on. "
― Allison Hoover Bartlett , The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
5
" On a spring day in 1988…a Massachusetts man who collected books about local history was rummaging through a bin in a New Hampshire antiques barn when something caught his eye. Beneath texts on fertilizers and farm machines lay a slim, worn pamphlet with tea-colored paper covers, titled Tamerlane and Other Poems, by an unnamed author identified simply as “a Bostonian.” He was fairly certain he had found something exceptional, paid the $15 price, and headed home, where Tamerlane would spend only one night. The next day, he contacted Sotheby’s, and they confirmed his suspicion that he had just made one of the most exciting book discoveries in years. The pamphlet was a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s first text, written when he was only fourteen years old, a find that fortune-seeking collectors have imagined happening upon probably more than they’d like to admit. The humble-looking, forty-page pamphlet was published in 1827 by Calvin F.S. Thomas, a relatively unknown Boston printer who specialized in apothecary labels, and its original price was about twelve cents. But this copy, looking good for its 161 years, most of which were probably spent languishing in one dusty attic box after another, would soon be auctioned for a staggering $198,000. "
― Allison Hoover Bartlett , The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
10
" I realized that the man I thought was stealing books so that others would consider him a cultured gentleman, the man who was building a phony image, a counterfeit identity, was in fact working diligently to become that gentleman. He was studying philosophy, researching authors, reading literature, even writing his own essays and plays. Through these efforts, he was attempting to create his ideal self. Another way of begetting this self, I came to understand, was by telling his story through me. "
― Allison Hoover Bartlett , The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
16
" The late American collector Robert H. Taylor said that a rare book is “a book I want badly and can’t find.” On the occasions that people answer seriously, they all agree that “rare” is a highly subjective moniker.
The earliest use of the term has been traced to an English book-sale catalog in November 1692. But it wasn’t until the early eighteenth century that scholars attempted to define what makes a book rare, with bibliophile J. E. Berger making Monty Python-esque distinctions between “rarus” and “rarior” and “rarissiumus.” A book’s degree of rarity remains subjective, and the only qualities of “rare” that collectors and dealers seem to agree on is some combination of scarcity, importance, “and condition. Taste and trends play roles as well, however. When a movie adaptation is released, whether Pride and Prejudice or Nancy Drew, first editions of the book often become temporarily hot property among collectors. While Dickens will almost certainly be a perennial choice, Dr. Seuss’s star has risen as the children who were raised on his books have become adults with the means to form their own collections. "
― Allison Hoover Bartlett , The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
