“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books,” wrote Virginia Woolf. “They have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.” Perhaps because of this Sotheran’s, one of the oldest uncommon and vintage bookstores on this planet (“One year away from closing since 1761,” as the shop’s working joke goes), looks like a darkish forest full of journey.
In Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller, satisfyingly named guide vendor Oliver Darkshire extends an invite into the shadowy and ever so barely harmful realm of this London bookshop. Health and security hazards lurk round each flip. Towers of forgotten containers rustle with out prompting. Crumbling esoteric publications should be delivered to anonymous brokers on prepare platforms. As Darkshire portrays it in his humorous and hyperbolic memoir, bookselling is as removed from a tame occupation as you may get, extra akin to becoming a member of MI6 or the CIA, or maybe taking over skilled snake dealing with.
Oliver Darkshire tells the surprisingly fashionable story of how his guide about a 262-year-old bookstore got here to be.
Darkshire insists he merely stumbled into a profession at Sotheran’s by responding to an commercial after a collection of failed makes an attempt to land or maintain down different jobs. His quirkiness, his adoration of historical past and his wide-eyed sense of surprise on the magic of books marked him as uniquely suited to the place (which largely entailed sitting behind a postage stamp-size desk by the door, as a first line of protection in opposition to clients). As Darkshire leads readers via the stacks, opening and shutting numerous mysterious cabinets, we expertise the fun of being invited into his secret world. Peopled with taxidermied birds, a resident ghost and a band of frazzled booksellers, Sotheran’s constitutes its personal small, puckish kingdom. Darkshire’s prose is so confiding in tone that the reader feels firmly included on this insular, bookish underworld.
For the devoted guide hoarder and hunter, studying Once Upon a Tome is just like the deliciously bewildering expertise of wandering via a uncommon bookstore, not realizing what treasure could be simply across the nook. Darkshire’s chapters are helpfully labeled with headings akin to “Natural History” and “Modern First Editions”—however upon nearer scrutiny, they’re full of tales that generally connect with the topic they’re filed beneath solely by the thinnest thread. In some books this may tangle the narrative into a quantity of pure chaos, however via some type of cheerful alchemy, it solely provides to the magic of our journey via Sotheran’s. One isn’t in management in a bookstore; that is an undeniable fact lengthy identified by all guide lovers. The sooner you give up to the curious inside logic of this world of books, the earlier the magic begins.
Discussion about this post