A Gentlemens Thing - Rare Books And Manuscripts !

Does not every man dream of having a mansion with a cigar room. Some leather chairs, some good smokes, a few bottles of vintage cognac's, a few board games and some cool rare books and manuscripts! Even if you are not with me on this one you need to check out the Biblioctopus Catalog which can be as entertaining a read as some of the rare and antiquarian books that the Beverly Hills, Calif., shop sells. An entry for a first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea asserts that the book is “as stubbornly immortal as those plastic baby diapers that won’t biodegrade.” A listing for a signed first edition of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover begins by positing that this novel, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer form a 20th-century triumvirate “lecturing that chastity is just an unlit lamp and adult abstinence ranks as a purity alongside of malnutrition.” Shop proprietor and catalog author Mark Hime, who founded Biblioctopus in 1979 contends that his irreverent descriptions reflect a sound strategy. He is trying to seduce librarians and other collectors into reading the catalog so they buy something they didn’t know they wanted until they read about it. His instincts were correct. Nearly a third of the books in his catalog, which he publishes at least once per year and sends to about 1,000 subscribers, are purchased within the first three weeks of the catalog’s release. Those sales are sufficient to absorb the occasional loss of a customer who cancels his or her subscription after being offended by Hime’s commentary. Hime, who is 63, published his first catalog in 1980. You need to check these catalogs out. They are hilarious , entertaining and whom knows - it may just be the start to your own collection!
Biblioctopus
310.271.2173