My Year of the Book - Day 57: No matter what you love to do, it is always nice to come across like-minded people. Nicholas Basbanes has written often on book people, places and culture, and that includes today’s MYOTB entry, “Patience & Fortitude” (2001), a follow-up to his fine “A Gentle Madness” (1996). I traveled often for work in the pre-Internet days, which enabled me to frequent dozens of used bookstores across the US, exposing me to diverse inventories I would not have been able to browse in any other way. Sure, I could try to hunt down specific rare books via mail order or by phone, but where’s the fun in that? I can’t count the number of times I bought something I had never heard of on those trips to New York City, Chicago, Dallas, Portland, Denver...you name it. And while Basbanes writes of many dealers and collectors in P&F, my favorite entry is about the legendary Peter B. Howard of Serendipity Books in Berkeley. As a dedicated George R. Stewart collector (See Day 51), I visited SB and PH often. He wasted no words, and expected the same in return, so our “discussions” were usually brief but always fruitful. The first time I walked in, I made the mistake (after mentioning I collected GRS) of saying that I was simply looking for better copies of his books because I had “everything he’d written.” He glared at me over his glasses, said “No, you don’t,” and walked off. He was right, of course, and over many visits, I picked up some delightful stuff, including correspondence and other ephemera. Ironically, when I pulled P&F off the shelf to write this, I found one of PH’s handwritten invoices from a GRS-buying trip in 2002 (Photo 2...that’s PH in upper left). Howard died in 2011 at age 72. I stopped by the building on University Ave. while in NorCal earlier this month, and it is sadly empty. Too bad, because I’m pretty sure I STILL don’t have everything GRS ever wrote. RIP, PH. #booklover #bibliophile #bookish #georgerstewart #berkeley #bookgeek #booksofinstagram #bookstagram #rarebooks #bookstore #patienceandfortitude #nicholasbasbanes #bookcollector #bookcollection #firstedition #completist #bookpeople #bookculture #bookshop #bookstore #booklove
