Books & Mags

Handling offensive titles without causing offense

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There’s certain words that would get you in big trouble if they were included in the title of a new book.  Unfortunately for rare book dealers, what was considered acceptable 50 or 100 years ago isn’t acceptable now.  This leaves the book dealer in a bit of a bind.  What to do with books that have racial slurs in the title or offensive cover artwork? Destroy them as hateful relics of ages past?  Hide them behind the counter?  Treat them just like any other old book?

While the safe option might seem to be to destroy them, in many ways this is worse than keeping them in circulation.  This whitewashes the past.  It sanitizes it and makes it easy to pretend certain things didn’t happen.  Things weren’t THAT bad.  Surely it’s being exagerated…

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Must-have books in your bookshop

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Must-haves in Your Stock (II)

Part I of Must-haves in Your Stock

By HeeJin Lee

It’s great to hear from those of you who have also been thinking about your must-haves. One bookshop that carries an eclectic selection in addition to the regulars found in any bookshop is the City Lights Books in San Francisco. The American sister bookshop to George Whitman’s Shakespeare & Company in Paris (not to be confused with Sylvia Beach’s store by the same name; for an account of Whitman’s store and the relationship between the two stores, I recommend Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer) has a Beat Literature & History section, a Dada & Surrealism section, and a Green section. Check out the bookshop online here: www.citylights.com.

The next must-have category for me is:

  • Introduction to Korea
Korea Old Palace Buildings

While I came to the States with my family when I was young, I have maintained a strong connection with my home country. In the States, my parents and I used to count the number of English-language books on Korea available in bookshops or libraries that we visited. What started out as a childhood counting game has turned into a personal mission of sorts to share my fondness for Korea with others, all the more since I studied Korean Studies in college. In my bookshop, I plan to have a Korea section which would include language instruction books, travel guides, history books, and Korea-related literature (English-language works about Korea and works by Korean authors).

Despite my penchant for all things Korean, I have to admit that I haven’t read much Korean literature in English. So I jumped at the opportunity to read The Calligrapher’s Daughter: A Novel by the Korean-American author Eugenia Kim. Based on the life of the author’s own mother, the novel tells the story of Najin and her family during the Japanese colonization of Korea. Overall, I liked the book for the glimpse it gave into all levels of Korean society during the early 20th Century, as well as the authenticity of its storyline. I was particularly fascinated by Najin’s life at court in Seoul. Najin spends a part of her youth as a playmate to Princess Deokhye, the youngest member of the last Korean royal family, at a time when the royal family was desperately trying to hold on to their country through their traditions while grappling with Western-style modernization.

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When does bulk buying for your bookshop get out of hand?

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The listing was for 2,000+ books and I won it for some ridiculously small amount, totally stunned at that as I kept on reducing my top price before I actually put in my bid. When I got there, with my nephew for muscle, there were more like 4,500 books. I know it’s not a lot compared to some other people’s buys but it was a lot for me at the time, bear in mind I was really only starting out and I used to buy a handful of books at a time at op shops and garage sales. I was floored and unable to deal with them for some time.

Bookstore Speak: Words of the Trade

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Bookstore Speak:

Words of the Trade

By Louis Gereaux

All booksellers of used books will have at one time or another come across the word dog-eared.  What does that word mean anyway, and where did it come from?  Dog eared pages are less common in today’s fast turn around of used books. Many used book are almost new.  It might be that more readers are using the bookmarks we stick in our books for sale, who knows?  But the term dog eared means a turned down corner of a book page.  The term originated in the trade because these turned down pages look like the ears of dogs which do not stick up.

This antiquated term – dog-eared is no longer used that much in online book descriptions as a result of mass listings, but it should be there.  If for no other reason, there have to be books on the market which have turned down page corners. As opposed to the term binding tight – this is a term that has survived and thrived in online bookselling.  Why switch the order of the words when one means to say the book has a tight binding? That is the original book selling term though, and binding tight is a phrase used to make a strong positive impression on the potential buyer.  It says this is a book which will not fall apart when you receive it – the worst fear of most used book purchasers site unseen.

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The books of the future will be made of sugar, wheat, and weed!

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“Dead tree edition” is an often used internetism to refer to hard copy editions of publications that are increasingly available online.  It’s obviously meant to be a dig at how old and uncool printed material is… but “dead tree editions” largely refer only to 20th century books.  Antiquarian books largely aren’t printed on “dead trees”.  And the books of the future may still be printed on paper… but there won’t be any trees involved.

Paper may look all the same once its bound in a “dead tree edition” but it often involves no trees at all.  Sometimes you’ll find information on the title page telling you what type of paper was used in the printing.  This is pretty rare, but you’ll trip across it every now and then from specialty presses.

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Translations and Bookstores

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wherever-cover-medAfter spending the last few months consciously trying to read translated books, I found the newest anthology by Center for the Art of Translation, Wherever I Lie Is Your Bed, the perfect introduction to translated literature from around the world.  The anthology is a mixture of short stories, book excerpts and poems.  The works are stellar; one after another capturing a haunting moment, the beauty of a life, the isolation of a life alone, with an immediacy that some people believe cannot be translated from one language to another.  When I read a translated book, I often feel like the translator is a person in the corner watching me, knowing but silent.  I poured over the translators introductions to each entry finally feeling like an essential person in my experience was finally given voice.

“Rain at the Construction Site,” a short story from a Greek writer, Ersi Sotiropoulos, translated by Karen Emmerich, contained a combination of the universal, the sadness of a life not lived, a life suddenly and seemingly inexplicitly stolen with elements that were definitely foreign to the American reader.  In a snapshot of one afternoon, the reader feels the main characters isolation and kindness as he stops to keep a stranger company during her grief.  Even if I didn’t know I was reading a translated story, the second paragraph would have screamed it:

    In his opinion the construction of the road wasn’t moving fast enough, not at the pace he would have liked.  “What do you care?” the workmen would bark at him, annoyed.  Sooner or later the road would get built, that was their philosophy.  “Are you really in such a rush to be out of work?” the foreman would joke.

Clearly, not the overworked American philosophy we’re so used to reading about.

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