October 21, 2005
a book hunting expedition
One of my favorite activities is to go book-hunting in book stores. It's also a necessity, since I'm still fine-tuning my book list for my comps, and libraries don't always have the books I need in circulation.
I had in hand a list of books I was willing to buy new, thinking I would never find them in a used-book store.
My first stop was Chapters Bookstore. They might very well have had my books, but they were closed (at 6pm, when the website said they closed at 7pm). Annoyance.
So I got back on my bike and headed towards Kramer Books at Dupont Circle (1517 Conn. Ave., NW, Washington DC, no phone number on website--TERRIBLE website, I can't bring myself link it), thinking they might have the litcrit books I needed.*
When I got to Kramer's, I went in search for a good critical edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincy. I am very disappointed to report that there was not one edition of TdeQ to be had. I even asked the clerk to look for it in the stock database. Not there. I suppose I could have asked them to order it for me, but that's too much of a hassle. I need my books NOW.
So then I went to probably my favorite used-book store, Kultura's Books, at Dupont Circle (1741 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC
(202)462-2541--no website that I could find). I very quickly was reminded why it's one of my favorite places to track down books.
I didn't find an edition of de Quincy, but I otherwise scored bigtime. I found a nice edition of the complete poems of both Keats and Shelley, with many items on my list (pictured). I found a selected poetry and prose of S.T. Coleridge, with more stuff on my comps list. I found a small hardback edition of the essays, letters, and poems of Charles Lamb, including some of the later Elia essays (also on my list). I found an edition of the poetry and prose of Alexander Pope (with two items on my list). I also found books by Dorothy Wordsworth and John Clare (who are auditioning for my list), and an almost-new A Blake Dictionary by S. Foster Damon, which is not on my list but will come in handy.
The fact is that half of those books would probably not be on the shelf at a regular bookstore, or even at many used book stores. I think that's a sad commentary on the state of book stores today. But it also strengthened my resolve to do the work of digitizing out-of-print or too-expensive-to-print works of literature. That's my response and my revenge: "Fine, I'll get it out of some library and then digitize it." Some day, mark my work, you may Google and find a critical edition of de Quincy online, and yours truly will be the editor.
*I might have gone to Barnes and Noble in Georgetown, but I try to avoid the big chains if I can. B&N is always book store of last resort for me.
Posted by jeb at October 21, 2005 6:24 PM | TrackBack