The Booksellers

The Booksellers

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source: The Booksellers

If books put you to sleep, then you'll have no problem falling asleep to this snoozer. The title is as exciting as it sounds, people selling old books. Somewhat informative, but purely boring overall.

This is a truly fascinating study of rate book dealers .... who reside and have their businesses in the NYC area only. Believe it or not - there are incredibly fascinating book collector and sellers outside of NYC who would have added a lot more color and life to this documentary. Off hand, Mad Dog and The Pilgrim in Sweet Water, Wyoming - population around 30 or so. There are more animals than people, but certainly not more than there are books. Their story in how the owners wound up there from Denver is a documentary on it's own. The people who go to this destination bookstore that also provides fresh eggs, would put a lot of other bookstores to shame. So, to the documentary makers - her's your second doc!! You can thank me later.

Parker posey, from so many fun things, introduces this documentary on books and booksellers. Even the buildings where the bookseller's show take place have their own really interesting history. Commentary from fran lebowitz and gay talese. Great discussion of then and now.... in the old days, you went on the hunt for whatever or who ever you were collecting. Now, with ebay and the internet, there are twenty copies available, somewhere. The long hunt is just about extinct. If it's out there, it's available for a price. The inter webs have killed off most of the bookstores, and there are only a few left in new york city. People who collect something specific, and really like the hunt... will probably love this. The others, probably not so much. Interesting spotlight on the actual alice, of the famed alice in wonderland. It ends with a discussion of time spent reading and appreciating older, rare books. Good stuff. Directed by dw young, who seems to specialize in short films and documentaries.

If this were set in the time when Barnes and Noble was killing independent bookstores, it would have made me cry. That was truly sad. But at this point in time, the remaining sellers seem upset that technology means no longer cutting down trees to make books they can sell for thousands of dollars. I don't care about that. Technology changes things and that's life. I have asthma and couldn't read many books over the years bc they mold etc and so ebooks are a godsend. Plus, you can't print millions of copies of books without damaging the ecosystem so it's like being sad there aren't 8 track tapes anymore.

As a black person, I expected to not see any people of color in this documentary. I always appreciateI when filmmakers make an effort to be inclusive in their art because they understand the importance of representation in filmmaking. I'm an eBook/Kindle generation of book readers and fully aware of the slow but inevitable downfall of the physical copies. I wish I was part of this generation but the reality is that physical books need more a lot of money and space including maintenance.

It's a documentary on the antiquarian and rare book trade, primarily focused on New York City. In addition, it included conversations with a number of book collectors, including modern collectors, including a woman who is preserving material from the 1990s on Hip-Hop. The rise, but plateauing, in the percentage of rare book dealers who are women is also discussed, as is the much-predicted demise of books and reading in general. Many of the dealers fit the stereotype of eccentric older white men, but some others do not. As I watched, I reflected on my personal history of collecting books, mainly in the narrow field of Mennonitica. My day job was in a Mennonite Library and Archives, where I touched many books that I knew I could never own. But I still tried; getting up to over 3,000 books before retirement and downsizing required an adjustment in my sights. But I still recalled the delight of getting a signed copy of a book by a "famous" Mennonite, e.g., Harold Bender, or a surviving book jacket of a Mennonite history I had never seen before, or a signed copy of one of the earliest "Mennonite" novels, "Flamethrowers," by Gorden Friesen. Anyone who has been a book collector at some point in their life will enjoy this wide-ranging documentary.

As a previous reviewer said, it's "an eclectic story about eclectic people. " A bit rambling, a bit disorganized but all the things that could make it annoying to some made it endearing to me. I took notes so I can go do my own research on who some of these people and bookstore are.