Skoob Blog: Second Hand Books; Used Books

Thanks to the redoubtable Time Out for the laurels they have recently awarded us. 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.

Lost and Found

Ancient bookmarks, postcards, thank you notes, flowers and very occasionally banknotes all appear amongst the pages, as we prepare books for sale. This sophisticated looking fellow turned up recently, an old news clipping celebrating the then centenary of H.W Fowler.

Henry Watson Fowler was a distinguished lexicographer (1858 - 1933) responsible, with his brother Francis for The King‘s English and after the latter‘s death for A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. A revised edition is still in print more than 80 years after publication, as is The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on which he also worked.

Deep Storage

A glimpse of one of our warehouses as the stock is sorted prior to a move to more suitable premises. A great pile. But storage in these wonderful buildings has been a little bit too deep, too cold to work in winter. We will soon have the books in a more manageable environment, out of their boxes, back into circulation.

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 now 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 recently appeared in the shop to highlight the profile of the Wedge Card. More on this on the homepage−it allows a discount from a range of independent businesses, and 10% off books at Skoob. On an afternoon of celebrity we also had a visit from a bishop (we get ‘em all in ‘ere).

Cameron

Act of God at Skoob!

With bright lights, but only the hand of man in evidence, we were lately taken over by filmmakers. The shop was used as a location for a new British film due out later this year. Called Act of God it stars such luminaries as David Suchet, Jenny Agutter and Adrian Dunbar (pictured). Photos by James Royall.

cabinet_film

interior_film

exterior_film

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.

Skoob Books, Venice, What's the Connection?

Com'era, Dov'era

Twice in its history Venice suffered unendurable losses. And both times, with a characteristic bravado, it said no to entropy. It would not let go.

The first time was when the campanile in Piazza San Marco collapsed on July 14, 1902. It was such a blow to civic self-image, such a neutering, that it had to be reversed. It was then that the expression (doctrine, really) "com'era. dov'era" was born: the campanile was to be rebuilt as it was ("com'era"), where it was ("dov'era"). Venetians were not going to face life without that campanile, and so they marshalled all their resources and resourcefulness to reject time's dictate. And within 10 years, the campanile was back on its feet.

The second time was January 29, 1996, when the Opera House La Fenice burned. The morning after, standing in its ashes, Mayor Massimo Cacciari pointedly made the same vow: "com'era, dov'era". From the day it vanished physically, La Fenice continued to remain alive as an idea, an irrepressible part of a city that refused to let it pass away.

The re-opening of La Fenice in December 2003, was much more than a triumph for opera lovers. It's proof that sometimes the spirit is stronger than the stone.

And that death, every now and then, has an escape clause: com'era, dov'era.

The same principle applies to Skoob. Despite the loss of 18 months while the Brunswick's concrete was remoulded and developed, we hope to be a refuge from the chainstores and predictability of London's retail environment, while providing quality books and a service second to none. "How it was, where it was!"