Once upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller

The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller

English language

Published March 14, 2023 by Norton & Company Limited, W. W..

ISBN:
978-1-324-09207-0
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4 stars (6 reviews)

Welcome to Sotheran’s, one of the oldest bookshops in the world, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabeled keys, poisoned books, and some things that aren’t even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice.

Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd (est. 1761) to apply for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and placating the store’s resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram).

A novice in this ancient, potentially haunted establishment, Darkshire describes Sotheran’s brushes with history (Dickens, the Titanic), its joyous disorganization, and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff, whose mere glance may cause the computer to burst into flames. As Darkshire gains confidence and experience, he shares trivia about ancient editions and explores the …

3 editions

Once Upon a Tome, by Oliver Darkshire

3 stars

I feel a lot of kinship with booksellers, being a librarian. We both have to deal with odd questions that might not be answerable. We both have lots of people coming who don’t really understand what the place is about. And, of course, there are all those books that will surely find a reader one of these days. Thankfully, we librarians don’t have to worry about actually selling things to customers (instead we have to pester people to bring things back at some point). Because of that sense of kinship, I am drawn to books about the bookselling life, fictional or not, like Parnassus on Wheels, 84, Charing Cross Road, and The Diary of a Bookseller. When I heard about Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller—and learned that author Oliver Darkshire was the hilarious weirdo behind the Henry Sotheran LTD Twitter account—I …

Review of 'Once upon a Tome' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

En fornøyelig liten hyldest til antikvariske bokhandler og menneskene som jobber der. Boken har den type omslag som hadde fått meg til å legge vekk boken hvis jeg skulle valgt den selv, men heldigvis har man brødre som ikke bryr seg om sånne ting når de gir julegaver.
Jeg har fått større interesse for antikvariske bøker etter dette, og hvis du vil styrke din bibliofili, er det bare å lese i vei. Koselig og lettbeint om en sær interesse.