Skoob Blog: Second Hand Books; Used Books

News from France

A piece from Télématin, French breakfast television, has just appeared. An immaculate anchor man, William Leymergie, links to Jaques Cardoze who reports about the state of the book trade, the effect of ebooks, Amazon and so forth. The shop is shown, with input from our proprietor, more fluent speakers can find it here.

The Wall of Found

We‘ve never found a large amount of money in a book, hope springs. There is nonetheless over time a lot of other stuff. At our warehouse it was first called the wall of found, though walls plural would now be more appropriate. An accretion of lost significance constrained by sparse pins. The writer Wayne Gooderham came to look and has written a piece for the Guardian online. See the Noticeboard page for a link to this and his other book related articles.

The Moons at Skoob

A pleasing musical diversion from amongst familiar shelves, see the Moons‘ single, Jennifer (sits alone) here.

Barrie Buxton RIP

Staff and customers of a certain vintage will remember Barrie, news of whose death, aged 69, took a few weeks to reach us. I believe he worked for Pooles in the Charing Cross Road and then later for Skoob, for some years, whilst we were in Sicilian Avenue. The picture above was taken there in 1993. Dr Buxton was both popular and eccentric, scrupulously polite and many years after he left, people still ask after him. He was strong on history, politics and psychiatry and had a very deliberate delivery that none of us will forget.

His fifteen minutes of fame came when Tony Blair ran for the leadership of the Labour party. At that point, any party member could stand and Barrie, unusually well versed in the minutiae of party rules, knew it. He was the son of a labour activist and smelt a wrong-un in Tony Blair. Of course, Barrie had absolutely no clout and was swatted aside, but not before he had made his point. In recent years Barrie would occasionally appear, minus his beard and often in tweed.

New Green Space

Beyond our front door, over the walkway railing, there has been for some years a rather neglected space. After some months of machines and men in the mud, this is now transformed. The Marchmont Community Garden has come into being. It has been newly designed, landscaped and planted. There are chairs and benches and hope that it will flourish, encouraging the spirits of passers by and drawing in birds and other wildlife.

We have done our bit, having bought your book, you can now begin it on a sturdy timber chair, sponsored by Skoob Books. The tireless Ricci de Freitas, author of The Story of Marchmont Street (see our homepage) should be thanked for his considerable industry in the garden project. So far the places to sit are certainly popular. There are a good number of plants, if you live or work locally, there is an email address for volunteer gardeners: ideas@marchmontassociation.org.uk

Time Out

Thanks to the redoubtable Time Out for the laurels they awarded us in 2010. Also for concentrating on the physical, sensual nature of books. If we can be ‘a temple for secondhand books’ we will continue to make it as broad a church as possible. As is probably inevitable in such an enterprise, their description beyond the spirit of the shop, erred slightly in a couple of details. Our huge Oxford stock is not in a shop. Please don’t look for us in the city – we will fetch or send the books to you from our out-of-town warehouses there. This is where we keep our books for sale online, and large amounts we haven’t yet priced or catalogued (see below). It might also be pointed out that whilst we do buy the stock of bookshops which have come to the end of their lives, it is not, thankfully, a constant process. If your local bookshop looks a bit off colour, you won’t look up to see the Skoob vulture circling. The more independent bookshops around the country, the better. There are some further notes on the book selling, at the foot of the Specialist Areas page.

House Calls

If you have a quantity of books looking for a new home (see Sell Books), we will come and visit. An added bonus is that there is a dedicated Skoob van for house calls, here it is nestling by the shrubbery. An adornment to any drive, your neighbour’s curtains will be a frenzy of motion.

David Cameron

You really never do know who you may be browsing next to. We normally allow customers discretion to come and go without making a fuss online, however David Cameron appeared in the shop to promote a discount card. This was before his diary was filled with prime ministerial duties. On an afternoon of celebrity we also had a visit from a bishop (we get ‘em all in ‘ere).

Cameron

Book Handling Service

Most of our books are second hand or ex-library, though we do have a considerable number still packaged in their original shrinkwrapping. The history of a book doesn't end at the printers. Its use, utility and intellectual value often continues to grow as its fabric ages. We have, awaiting cataloguing, a large quantity of works on a 20th century literary giant by a late Professor who was a real bugger with the pencil. However, his comments add to the intellectual content of the printed word and we are not removing them. One of my favourite possessions is a copy of Tressell's Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists that came from a seamen's mission and had been absolutely hammered by aggressive reading and probably a bit of the Atlantic Ocean. I tried to read someone some extracts from a new copy in Waterstones the other week and couldn't get into it.

flann o'brien. Flann O'Brian (Myles nagCopaleen) may come to feature heavily on this webpage. We don't stock many of his books (I hoard them and only loan them to trusted individuals) but his wise words are an inspiration to us all (as well as his foolish ones). Do you know he anticipated the smoking ban in Dublin as early as 1940? (The Third Policeman p21)

In his Irish Times column, Myles launched a book-handling service for illiterates with big houses. Why should a wealthy person like this be put to the trouble of pretending to read at all? Why not a professional book-handler to go in and suitably maul his library for so-much per shelf? Such a person, if properly qualified, could make a fortune. "Professional book-handlers", he wrote "...will maul the books of illiterate, but wealthy, upstarts so that the books will look as if they have been read and re-read by their owners."

He went on to describe various levels of 'Buchhandlung', from Dog Ears Four-A-Penny, being the bare minimum of handling and softening pages, to the deluxe Le Traitement Superbe which would cover the following:

Every volume to be well and truly handled, first by a qualified handler and subsequently by a master-handler who shall have to his credit not less than 550 handling hours; suitable passages in not less than fifty per cent of the books to be underlined in good-quality red ink and an appropriate phrase from the following list inserted in the margin:
"viz: Rubbish!",
"Yes, indeedl How true, how true!",
"I don't agree at all",
"Why?",
"Yes, but cf. Homer, Od., iii, 151",
"Well, well, well. Quite, but Boussuet in his Discours sur l'histoire Universelle has already established the same point and given much more forceful explanations",
"Nonsense, nonsense!",
"A point well taken!",
"I remember poor Joyce saying the very same thing to me. "

While we sadly don't offer professional bookhandling, we do have a wide range of books that have obvious signs of mileage but are still perfectly readable copies for those who prefer their books to have a softened appeal.