Tag Archives: collectible books

THE THORNFIELD HALL NEWSLETTER

Spring 2025, Issue 4

In this issue, I consider the pros and cons of Zoom, show you my latest collectible books, and “review” a charming collection of John Verney’s humor writing and cartoons.

Va-va Voom! It’s a Zoom World!

“Then the faces of all the other women in our book group popped up, each in a separate little frame, like the celebrities on Hollywood Squares. Some of the women’s mouths were moving soundlessly. Only Evelyn’s frame was empty until she whizzed by, calling [the dog].” – “The Great Escape,” from Hilma Wolitzer’s Today a Woman Went Mad at the Supermarket

My husband recommended Zoom. “You should try a Zoom book event. It’s a necessary skill in the 21st century.”

Is it? They said that about cell phones, but I prefer the landline.

“But why don’t you try Zoom? I mean really.”

I have many answers.

• Djuna Barnes didn’t have Zoom.
• I’m not crazy about the telehealth thing.
• I’m cutting back on screen time.
• I have to go pick up a latte.

He seems to enjoy it, whoever he is!

Finally I gave in.

I arrived out-of-breath, unfashionably late, because I needed to download the Zoom app first – actually, it downloaded itself – several times! Suddenly I was whisked into the “room” with tiny pictures of people in the margins of the screen. I would have turned off my picture, but I’d been told it was considered rude, and anyway I didn’t know how.

There was a large, eclectic crowd. You know how it is: in any big group, some people “raise their hands” again and again. It’s like a game show: who can push the button the fastest? Now that I was there, I figured I might as well chat, but I could not find the raise-your-hands icon. The other silent ones were probably also hunting for the button. It was a lot of lonely women in their kitchens, if you know what I mean. I do not exclude myself from that category: I was in the living room.

I sent a thank you note to the leaders. Is that the protocol?

Technology seemed fun at first, but now we are technology.

By the way, I was enchanted by Hilma Wolitzer’s short story, “The Great Escape.” (See the epigraph.) Set during the Covid lockdown in New York, this story centers on a group of nonagenarians trying to conduct their book group on Zoom. You can read my review of this 2021 short story collection here.

My Latest “Collectible” Books

I have four words for you, two of them initials: C. K. Scott Moncrieff.

I am obsessed with his 1920s translation of Proust.

Years ago I bought a cheap Modern Library set of Moncrieff’s Remembrance of Things Past. I paid $5 for it. But it disappeared long ago, and I am determined to replace my set. However, it’s cheaper to collect the books separately. So there is much looking in carts outside of bookstores, and crawling on floors covered with books in overstuffed bookstores.

So far I’ve found Cities of the Plain, the fourth book in the series, in the 1954 edition. The book jacket is lovely: no bent corners, no rips. And I’m fascinated by the list of titles inside the book jacket. Actually I have some of these old Modern Library editions: Webb’s Precious Bane, H. G. Wells’s Tono-Bungay, etc.

My other find is a tiny Everyman’s Library edition of George Eliot’s Adam Bede. It is adorable, even smaller than my old Modern Library book. Having read five new books lately, only one of them excellent, I must return to the classics. I have six different pairs of glasses, so I should be able to read the tiny print with no problem.

Verney Abroad

I love John Verney’s illustrations. I was and am hooked on his smart, witty children’s novels, Friday’s Tunnel and February’s Road, about the Callendar family. Mr. Callendar is a journalist who investigates slimeball politicians, etc., and his oldest son and daughter, Friday and February, investigate on their own. The police interview February at one point. Paul Dry publishes these two masterpieces by Verney and his memoir, Going to the Wars.

I picked up this strange little book, Verney Abroad, in a book bin outside a shop. It is amusing travel writing, complete with illustrations and cartoons. It has only 95 pages, and I wish there were more. It is VERY slight.


Have a jolly spring, or mud season, as we call it! And be sure to let me know about your Zoom experiences.

The Ghosts of Booksellers: Collectibles in Glass Cases

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, or perhaps in another dimension altogether, sellers of musty secondhand books were important members of the community. In every town you would find at least one used bookstore, whose owners were frankly an eccentric lot. The men wore fresh, tidy bow ties and dashed around the store with feather dusters, or looked like Beatnik refugees from the fifties who had just smoked reefer. The charming women store owners wore black dresses feathered with cat hair and dreamily recited the poems of H.D. I reverently tiptoed , trying to avoid the disapproval of the feather duster men, whose motto clearly was DON’T TOUCH THAT BOOK! and to circumvent six-hour chats with the black-clad chain-smoking women about their favorite author, Simone Weil, whom I had not yet read.

I went through an anti-social phase, when I took to peering at the rare books in glass cases, as if there were some possibility I could buy them. It was like going to the British Library, only there you peer at manuscripts of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre or Angela Carter’s Wise Children. The cases in our bookstores were full of old books I could hardly imagine anyone coveting. Does anyone really want a first or second edition of Max Shulman’s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, though perhaps one does want a first edition of Virginia Woolf’s The Years? Dare I say it? My paperbacks are usually nicer.

And yet I did make friends, or at least acquaintances, with booksellers, because I was a regular, and a buyer of books. One Christmas Eve, I was wandering around a bookstore gloomily, because I had trouble buying gifts for parents and other acquaintances. A shaggy-haired bookseller with rare social charm noticed me admiring a Folio Society edition of The Virgin and the Gipsy. “Take it. Merry Christmas! Nobody wants it. It’s been here for years.” “Oh, no, I couldn’t.” Bring out the midwestern self-depreciating manners! He insisted. It was a dilemma. Would it be wrong to accept the book? But he was not a dirty old man, looking for a snuggle, and I was a longtime customer, so I said Yes. It is far from Lawrence’s best book, but I loved it from this moment.

Heritage Press edition of Anna Karenina, trans. by Constance Garnett

Now I know you will expect to hear that I became a collector after this. I did not. I prefer reading copies, whether they be old hardcovers or new paperbacks. I have acquired a few collectibles, of the kind that are not of great worth: a lovely 1952 Heritage Book Club edition of Anna Karenina, illustrated with lithographs by Barnett Freedman; a weirdo boxed Folio Society set of the Brontes in silk covers; and a Literary Guild abridged edition of Bleak House illustrated by Edward Gorey. Damn! I bought it for the illustrations, but don’t like abridged editions. Still, the Gorey illustrations are worth it.

Edward Gorey frontispiece Bleak House

The problem with these charming collectibles is that they are not all in great shape. I love the Anna Karenina, but I am almost afraid to read it, because the spine is cracking. Do I simply look at it from time to time, or do I read it? One must read! And the Bronte set, with the silk covers, is not really attractive at all. (I bought it at eBay.) There are illustrations in the silk books, but the new Folio editions of the Brontes are much nicer.

Doesn’t this silk edition look a bit weird?

The thing is: used bookstores seem to be in crisis now, because of the pandemic. The prices of used books online are ridiculous, $100 (and even $700) for mass market paperbacks I am sure are not in demand, by forgotten, possibly inferior, authors of the twentieth century. But offline, in their bookstore, the owners face different problems. I know of one used bookstore that is not open to the public, unless you are willing to pay $25 for an appointment. Perhaps the $25 includes the price of $25 worth of books? But I have noticed at the few used bookstores I’ve visit, that prices are way down, not up. Good for me, but probably not for them

Strange to see the high prices online, and to discover that pulp science fiction is now valuable. You buy it in a plastic bag for $10 and just wait what happens to the paper when you open it! In the stores, you can get much cheaper deals on pulp fiction. I say, let’s go back to the physical stores, if the poor owners can afford it.