RARE BOOK GUIDE - THE RUNNERS, THE RIDERS & THE ODDS

19 February 2009

French Bibliomaniacs (CBS Sunday Morning)

Well worth a watch. One wonders whether the Great Gatsby than John Baxter holds to camera is the real thing, if it is he can take a couple of years off - it was mint. This CBS six minuter also has Martin Stone -a legend in his own lunchtime - and various bouquinistes , wheelers and dealers and some good stuff on French pulps and series noirs........by the way --that's Martin on the left in characteristic pose... amor librorum nos unit...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A friend who runs the library bookshop here in Bloomington, Indiana told me about this piece a week or so ago. I worked at Pordes a little more than twenty years ago and I knew Martin Stone, though not as well as you did and do. I also sent a link to the video to two Stoneaphiles and former Any Amount employees, Adrian Curry and Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly.

I'm slightly surprised you haven't posted a link to the Guardian piece about the decline of the Charing Cross Road, particularly as it's chock full of pictures and a video of Any Amount. Perhaps its news, if that's what it is, is too depressing. I hope you, Pordes, and even Quinto, where I worked when it was called Read's, manage to survive the combined onslaught of the internet and the Soho Housing Association.

Gareth Evans

Anonymous said...

For those who haven't seen it, here's the link to the excellent Guardian piece Gareth mentions -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/interactive/2009/jan/31/charing-cross-bookshops

I thought it was mentioned earlier, i suppose I've just imagined that.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this. I wish, however, that CBS had provided captions for Martin Stone's comments.
The disparity between the number of bookstores in Paris and New York City was shocking. I was reminded of a comment by Don DeLilo: I think of Europe as the hard cover edition; America is the paperback version. (Hope I got that quote right!)