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| Books: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Larry Mcmurtry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy Used: $8.57
You Save: $15.43 (64%)
New (45) Used (28) Collectible (2) from $8.57
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 19498
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Simon & Schuster Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 1416583343
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416583349
ASIN: 1416583343
Publication Date: July 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Standard used condition.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The master writer is also a bookman... July 30, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I came to know McMurtry as many did through his excellent novel Lonesome Dove: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics). Then I learned I already knew him through the many screenplays and novels he has written that became major motion pictures: Hud, The Last Picture Show (Definitive Director's Cut Special Edition), Terms of Endearment to name a few. I have since read most of what he has written. I heard he owned an eclectic used antique book store filled with many hard to find books many collector items, his novel Cadillac Jack : A Novel was about an antique book scout. So I was interested to read this memoir of McMurtry's life as a bookman. I use the term Bookman because you don't have to be a writer to be a bookman. McMurtry's simple mastery of the language is again on display as he takes on his journey of becoming a book scout and collector. The characters he meets and the places he travels are brought vividly to life. He ends up opening used book stores that carry rare and collectable editions, the eclectic of which is the one he opens in his home town of Archer City Texas (also the setting for the last Picture show, and subsequent sequels). McMurtry gives the reader an adventurous and some time comic look into the world of those who collect and covet rare books, a world inhabited by some strange birds! What I enjoyed most about this book, however, was the insight into how the many books he has read has formed his literary outlook and influenced his writings ( I have more than I few new books on my to be read list after finishing this book). This is a book I will read more than once.
 Satisfying and influential July 18, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
If one of the purposes of a book is to leave an impression of one kind or another, McMurtry's "Books" accomplished just that. I found this book to be a satisfying and influential read that left me curious and desiring to be a book collector. The stories are entertaining, educational, vividly portrayed, and descriptive. Like most of his books, I felt drawn into the world of which he was writing and wanted to be a part of that world.
This is a typical reaction to the writing of Larry McMurtry. Having met Mr. McMurty and experienced a conversation about books with him, I enjoyed hearing his voice in my head as he described the years of book collecting, buying and selling, and the multiple encounters with various characters. Without being preachy or philosophical, McMurtry tends to make the reader draw his own conclusions or judgments about people's actions and behavior. His objective and almost random interjections of difficulties and successes in book trading make "Books" a fascinating study in development of this admirable profession. Added to this study is a smooth prose with an eclectic and seamless blend of common and academic style--making it appropriate for all kinds of people.
I found this book to be a fascinating look at book collecting with an obvious love of books shining forth from beginning to end. Although I did find the ending to be rather anticlimactic, typical of McMurtry's style incidentally, throughout the book I found myself wanting to be there and experience similar events.
I am giving this book 4 stars due to the tendency to have too many names and events that didn't always add to the overall direction of the book. Overall, a worthwhile reading experience and I have yet to be disappointed with a McMurtry book.
 Instead, re-read Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen August 6, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Larry McMurtry is tired, ornery, depressed.
He worries that people don't read much anymore. He stopped reading fiction, for the most part, 20 years ago. He likes British political biography, the diaries of minor British aristocrats, (mostly) British travel writers, and of course the history of the American West (on which he has written and reviewed wonderfully), although there isn't really any of that here.
He is a book collector. Personally, I don't understand the collector mentality and find it annoying. He wonders why most people would care to read that he found such-and-such a book for $1 in 1956 in a garage and now it fetches $12,000 at Christie's. He is right to wonder, as are his editors and publishers. (Perhaps this is the last "book" of a multi-book deal?)
Over the years, Larry McMurtry has run into some colorful characters and come across rare books in book shops and at auctions. He relates a few humorous anecdotes about such people and things in a way that makes them not very funny. He summarizes the existences of a number of book stores and their owners/collectors (which should be interesting, but is not).
This latest effort reads like a series of notes for a book. Or the draft of a magazine article. It is randomly assembled and poorly edited. (By this I mean the editors should have told him, No, Please Give Us Something Approaching a Book!) Eventually, I started skimming for obscure book recommendations, and even found a few. The one surprise here is that McMurtry had and/or has large collections of comics and soft pornographic novels over the years. And he considers Pynchon's V a "masterpiece."
Most tellingly, and in defense of the title of my review, he repeats, very often, anecdotes from his great book-length essay, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. Please, if you read this review, and haven't read that, DO NOT read Books, but rather go and get yourself a copy of Dairy Queen instead.
Interesting, but limited July 28, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I learned a lot of interesting things from this book about the bookselling business. If you want a quick, intelligent read for summer, this would work. And Chapter 29, about the adventures of C. Dorman David, is worth the price of the book.
But as I neared the end of the book, I realized that there wasn't that much about the average reader who looks for particular books to read and treasure. For example, Ludwig Lewisohn's 1932 book Expression in America talks about forgotten classics like George Frederic Hummel's Subsoil and Ruth Suckow's The Odyssey of a Nice Girl. I happily discovered both of those books at the big John King bookstore in downtown Detroit.
There's nothing in McMurtry's book about bookstore visitors like me. He seems to be most interested in wealthy bookowners who buy books as much for show as for reading pleasure. For a book about the enthusiastic everyday reader, I'd recommend Christopher Morley's two classics, Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop.
 book buying, selling, reading and writing August 2, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
If "Dairy Queen" brought you to this book, you might end up being disappointed. The book is a series of 1 to 4 page anecdotes.
Some of the pages in the copy I had kept sticking together while I was reading and therefore there were times when I would move from one anecdote to another without completely reading one piece and in many instance I felt like skipping over but did not.
There are fish stories and there are personality stories, but there is no center to this narration, it goes on. if it had been a series of blogs, it might have been powerful...not sure whether the author's desire to kindle interest in books would really happen through this book.
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