Bouillabaisse for Bibliophiles...

I have a rapidly growing obsession with books on books/collecting/lore. I suffer these wee binges periodically. My most embarrassing was "discovering" Clive Cussler's Dirk Pit books several years ago...which resulted in my reading every one of them in sequence...very funny, great airplane books...but...er...perhaps too much in sequence.

My best binge, from a literature standpoint, was the year my grandfather passed away. When I entered college, he gave me a set of the Great Books of the Western World (along with a nice set of Brittanica). I used them a great deal during school (the 2 volume Syntopicon effectively cross-references "concepts" with the writings of some of the best writings put to paper by dead, white, western Europeans). The year he passed away, I decided that actually reading the entire set would be a fitting tribute. While I still believe two volumes of Thomas Aquinas is probably a bit more (approx. 1.5 volumes) than anyone actually needs, it was a wonderful exercise and one I would recommend to anyone.

Anyway, my current binge is the class of books on the nature of collecting and the history of given books, etc. There are just wonderful stories out there, the title is one rather well known volume, but there is so many more: The Amenities of Book Collecting, The Book Hunter, Books and Bidders, Unpublishable Memoirs and, more recently, books like Gentle Madness, A Splendor of Letters, Used and Rare, etc., etc., etc. Snippets will be forthcoming...