We speak to bookseller Vic Zoschak, who runs Tavistock Books in Alameda, California, and has sold on AbeBooks for 25 years. Vic explains how he took up bookselling after many years of rescuing people. He discusses his interest in Charles Dickens and the most memorable Dickens object that he ever handled (and it wasn't a book). Join us for 20 special minutes with a remarkable rare bookseller.
To continue our 25th anniversary celebrations, we speak to Jenny and Patrick Kalahar, who runs The Story Shop bookselling account on AbeBooks. Jenny and Patrick previously owned bookshops in Michigan and Ohio, while Jenny, an author, has published 14 books. Listen to their adventures in books from dressing up as Edgar Allan Poe to writing books about cats and answering bookish questions on a call-in radio show.
We interview Dr Adam Stern about his just-published book, Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training, which describes his four-year residency in Harvard's Medical Program. Adam offers an insight into the psychiatry profession, from the unpredictable experience of treating patients for the first time to suffering from the imposter syndrome.
To continue our 25th anniversary celebrations, we speak to Tom Lecky from Riverrun Books & Manuscripts in Ardsley, New York. Riverrun Books has sold with AbeBooks since 1996 with Tom buying the business in 2016. Previously, Tom was head of the printed books & manuscripts department at Christie’s in New York. He is also a book appraiser on PBS' Antiques Roadshow. As you can imagine, we have a lot to discuss.
To kick off our 25th anniversary celebrations, we interview bookseller Ray Boas from Walpole, New Hampshire, who has sold with AbeBooks since 1996 - our first year in business. We learn about Ray's adventures in bookselling from the early days of the internet to opening his own bookshop after retiring from the US Navy.
We are joined by Meg Dillon, a former BBC librarian, who explains about her new adventure in books. Meg runs the Small Library Company where she buys, sells and organizes books for small private collections. We also learn about Meg's first impressions of life in the rare bookselling business.
We are pulling on our hiking boots and stepping out on to the Appalachian Trail with author Philip D’anieri. Philip has written a book called The Appalachian Trail: A Biography which looks at the people behind the conception and construction of the trail over a period of 150 years. We discuss Bill Bryson and his 1998 book about the trail, the first person to walk the length of the trail, the volunteers who created and still maintain the trail, and how hiking is a relatively modern pastime.
Books written in blood, poisonous books, and edible books are just three of the topics covered in this episode. We are joined by Edward Brooke-Hitching, the author of The Madman's Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and other Literary Curiosities from History, who also explains about a book made from slices of cheese and numerous other literary oddities. This is a podcast episode devoted to the weird, unusual and eccentric.
We speak to grammarian Bryan Garner about rare grammar books. One hundred books from Bryan’s collection of 1,900 books about grammar and 4,000 dictionaries are currently on display at the Grolier Club in New York. We learn how a teenage crush sparked Bryan’s love of grammar, how Noah Webster was instrumental in the spelling differences between British and American English, and how grammar continues to evolve.
Allie Alvis is our guest as we explore book history. Allie creates easy-to-understand bite-size YouTube videos to explain rare book terminology. We discuss her love of rare books, including how Led Zeppelin and Monty Python can help us understand book collecting terms.
We interview Julia Cooke, who has written a book called Come Fly the World: The Jet Age Story of the Women of Pan Am. Julia’s book looks at the young women who became stewardesses with Pan Am in the 1960s and 1970s. She tells the stories of several American women who were the right height, right weight and under 26 years of age to qualify for a job at Pan Am. From women’s rights to the Vietnam War, Julia explores the role played by these women as the world became a whole lot smaller.
In this episode, we learn about rare Islamic books in the company of Roxana Kashani, who was recently hired to lead a new Islamic department at Shapero Rare Books in London. From the importance of the Quran to an early pioneer of fiction, we take a journey through the rare books of the Islamic world
They were the bestsellers of the Middle Ages. In this episode, we speak to Sandra Hindman, who runs Les Enluminures, a business dedicated to selling manuscripts and miniatures from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Sandra explains what books of hours contained, who owned them, how they were decorated and the purpose they served. Step back in time with AbeBooks and this expert bookseller.
Annie Buscemi and Natasya Zambri are booksellers who have gone mobile. Located in Queenstown, New Zealand, they have a bookstore on wheels - a Nissan van filled with books for sale. Listen to our interview as we hear about their adventures in mobile bookselling.
What's the definition of bookishness? We are joined by Jessica Pressman who is the associate professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. Jessica is the author of Bookishness, Loving Books in a Digital Age. She explains how bookishness is represented in 21st century culture and how print is loved while surrounded by digital media. We discuss book-themed objects, films, Instagram, experimental writing and... mermaids.
Several years ago, AbeBooks created a reading list called 100 (Fiction) Books to Read in a Lifetime. We are joined by Monica MacMillan, who is attempting to read every book on the list, which ranges from famous classics like Moby Dick and Fahrenheit 451 to contemporary fiction such as The Road and Life of Pi. Join us and learn about Monica's literary quest.
We investigate one of the great literary mysteries – the 11-day disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926 - with Marie Benedict, the author of The Mystery of Mrs Christie. Marie used a fictional narrative to imagine the disappearance and the events leading up to it. A real-life mystery about the queen of fictional mysteries.
We are joined by Pen Vogler who is the author of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain. The book investigates British food traditions from humble fish and chips to posh dinner parties. We discuss tea, comfort food, curries, Cornish pasties, pork pies, avocado, and oranges in Christmas stockings.
We are joined by Cheryl Alexander, a conservation photographer based in Victoria, British Columbia. Her book, Takaya Lone Wolf describes the remarkable life of a wolf that lived for 7 years on a group of small islands just off the coast of Victoria, a city of 300,000 people. We learn how Cheryl studied and photographed Takaya on numerous visits to the islands, and about this animal's lasting legacy in British Columbia.
We meet the team from The Sifter, an international, collaborative database of cookbooks designed to help people answer their food-related questions. Containing details of 8,000 authors and more than 7,000 works, The Sifter is a remarkable research tool detailing cookbooks and their contents down to the ingredients for particular recipes. We learn how the database has been years in the making and how it’s going to help scholars, researchers, cooks, scientists, and historians.
We return to Portland, Oregon, and speak to Rachel Phillips and Roger Hucek from Burnside Rare Books. They specialize in 20th century literature and signed books, and they have been selling books together since 2006. We discuss their bookselling evolution, the importance of photography, book fairs and much more.
We're at the ballpark, talking baseball. Bookseller Bobby Plapinger, from Ashland in Oregon, joins us. Bobby is a specialist baseball book dealer. Babe Ruth, early baseball books, cards vs books, and the belated interest in the Negro Leagues are just some of the topics we discuss.
Learn how John Stone, from the University of Barcelona, discovered a rare 1634 edition of Shakespeare's play The Two Noble Kinsmen, co-written with John Fletcher, in the library of a small Scottish college in Spain.
Today, we are Flintshire in the UK, visiting the UK's only residential library. We speak with Peter Francis who is the Warden and Director of Gladstone's Library in Hawarden, which is a few miles west of Chester. William Ewart Gladstone served 4 separate terms as Britain's prime minster between in 1868 and 1894. Today his personal library is available to the public, housed in a building where you can also spend the night. Join us to learn more about this remarkable library.
Today, we head to County Mayo on the west coast of the Republic of Ireland and speak to Roger Grimes, who is the co-owner of a bookshop and antiques business located in Mulranny. Vanessa Parker Rare Books and its sister business Greenway Antiques share a beautiful white-walled cottage. Vanessa does the books and Roger sells the antiques. Join us to hear about life and business in this beautiful part of the world.
We are joined by author and printmaker Nick Hayes, who has written a book called The Book of Trespass. Nick takes us into some of England’s grandest country estates… as a trespasser. He writes about how easy it to trespass and what he encountered while trespassing. He also writes at length about the history of trespassing in England – from the years following the Norman Conquest to today’s campaigns over the right to roam through the British countryside. We discuss the history of land ownership ...
We are talking about bookselling in the Balkans with Ian Dodds, who is an AbeBooks bookseller based in Bulgaria. Ian and his wife left the UK in 2007 to live and work in Bulgaria, and we hear about how they established an online bookselling business in a mountain village close to the border with Greece.
In our latest podcast, we speak to Church of Scotland minister Richard Frazer, who is the author of Travels With a Stick, a book about walking the Camino de Santiago. We discuss blisters, Robert Macfarlane’s influence on walking literature, John Muir’s dislike of the word 'hiking', and why pilgrimages are important.
We return to the subject of things found in used books. Our guest is Emma Smreker, a school teacher from Oklahoma City, who collects secondhand books in order to discover the forgotten things left inside. When she comes across something particularly poignant, such as a letter or a photo or a poem, she researches the item and tries to return it to the original owner. Learn about the remarkable connections that Emma is making through these forgotten objects.
We visit the theatre and discuss Shakespearean deaths with author Kathryn Harkup, who has written a book called Death by Shakespeare. Kathryn looked at how the Bard killed off his characters and asked if these deaths were realistic. She considered science, medicine, disease, weaponry, poisons, crimes and punishments, and Elizabethan history. We discuss Shakespeare's bloodiest play, how he didn't always get it right, the Bard's stagecraft skills and how he probably got some assistance from his so...
