Saturday, November 6, 2010

Used and Rare: Travels in the book world.

Today, I started on the second book that I bought (: It was, I figured, appropraite since all the books I've been collecting, and I used to toy with investing in books (although the only book I can have that is remotely antique is Five at Finnestone farm, but doesn't seem to be first or second edition), and it would be interesting (that sentence made no sense whatsoever, and has way too many paranthesis's ). And I was right, it was.

Before I bought it, I spent a fairly long time on Amazon reading the reviews and debating whether to buy it. One negative review was that it was "boring". And at first, that review came back subconciously to haunt me, when for some reason, the font felt jarring. But it soon went away, and I suppose the initial awkardness was becaue I started it straight after another book (How to read literature like a professor).

The book is very interesting, since it chronicle's the author's journey into book collecting, from just antiques to first editions. And since it's in narrative form, is much more interesting than a dry discourse. And it's not entirely useless, there's useful information such as how to identify bookclub editions and the difference. And I was honestly shocked at the value of some of the books. (:

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Used-Rare-Travels-Book-World/dp/0312187688/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I1U2NR5MPU3W73&colid=1YON0KNIDRY00
But, since Singapore doesn't seem to have a culture of collecting books (or maybe I'm not rich enough?), finding antique books seem to be hard. Unless I go back to Bras Basah. Which from last experience, was uh.... was, well, just used books that were either outdated or in bad condition. But still, from the internet, I've heard about finds. And after that expensive book buying spree, I suppose I'll have to stick to buying (mostly) second hand books for now. Or from Littered with books (I seriously cannot tear myself from that place). And who knows? I may find something valuable someday XD.

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