By Paul Heyde Which came first? The Akron Antiquarian Book Fair or the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society? In retrospect, disentangling the origins of the two northeast Ohio institutions may not entirely be the point, as they both really germinated out of the same seed of thought. What started out as […]
Book Talk
37 posts
by Michael Richards What do you do when suddenly you have a house full of books to deal with? Or maybe it’s just a few shelves full, but you’re not sure what to do with them. All you may know is that they mattered to the person who collected them. […]
Reviewed by Jennifer Larson Zinman, Michael. 2025. The Critical Mess. Annals of Collecting no. 10. New Jersey: Privately printed for the author. Distributed by Temporary Culture. This compendium of essays by and about Michael Zinman is itself a “critical mess” as defined by the author: “My approach to collecting was […]
By Hal Kanthor, M.D. I first discovered the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas as a teenager, after seeing a high school production of The Pirates of Penzance. I was so impressed that I began reading the librettos and listening to recordings of their other operas. Recognizing an affinity for Gilbert’s […]
by Kathy Roberts I collected nineteenth-century decorated cloth bookbindings, or publishers trade bindings, for 25 years. All were octavo size or slightly smaller. In any case, they were full-sized books. My collection spanned early 1830s calendered cloth, 1840s striped, printed, and ribbon-embossed cloth, the brilliant reds and blues of the […]
by Mark Warner (February 2025) I think I’ve always been a list maker and I’ve always been a completist, and those two quirks have certainly helped in my latest venture in the world of books. I started making lists of authors’ works when I was reading over 100 books a […]
by Marcia McBrien The best children’s literature doesn’t only entertain – it also helps young people develop empathy and confront difficult issues through reading, explained Dr. Kristy Spann, educator and member of the Book Club of Detroit. At a July 13 meeting of the Book Club of Detroit, Dr. Spann […]
By Nadeem Toodayan I am not infrequently introduced by family members to visitors as a hoarder of books. My mother thinks I’m crazy about them. But I for one cannot see what all the fuss is about, as mine is but a modest and mostly well-kept collection. I can draw […]
by Jennifer Larson “Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?” “So easy that to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.”–Busman’s Honeymoon (1937) To my mind, only two sleuths in the mystery genre exert a never-ending fascination: Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey. (I admit […]
By Marcia McBrien In war, not all battles are about taking territory or capturing enemy forces. An important – but largely hidden – aspect of war is a fight for hearts and minds. On April 13, thanks to retired U.S. Army Major Joseph L. Tebor, members of the Book Club […]