Bookseller Review: Laster's Fine Art & Antiques

Laster's Fine Art & Antiques

664 S. Stratford Rd.

Winston-Salem, NC

336.724.7544

www.lastersfineart.com

Laster's specializes in handling estates and collections and their retail store contains valuable paintings, prints, fine antiques, rare coins, and rare books. Most of their collection is leather-bound.  

What we like: Upon first entering, we wondered where the books were. But we soon found multiple bookcases loaded with some good titles, and older editions. All hardcovers, many from the late-19th and early-20th century.

What we don't like: Even for what they have, many seemed priced too high. The few that we checked out specifically we know to be pirated or unauthorized copies, a common practice around the turn of the last century, so the prices for those seemed steep.

Would we go again? Yes. The possibility of finding some real gems here definitely exists, so we'd be crazy not to visit any time we were in Winston-Salem.

At least we found the Forsyth Library sale, Pt. II

Monday we made the rounds to the four bookstores, and I have to say that we were mostly disappointed by what we found... or rather, didn't find. In short, the first stop -- 2nd Chance Ventures -- wasn't a stop at all. It didn't exist ... at least as a bookstore, if at all. So 0-for-1.

The next stop, Laster's Fine Art and Antiques, was actually pretty cool. It was an antiques/estate sale shop, and they did have a fair number of late 19th- and early 20th-century hardcovers, including one full bookcase devoted entirely to works in other languages. And while fun to browse, many of the books were priced too high for us -- not too high in general, but for us, relative to whether we liked the editions, they just weren't right-- or we recognized them as old but pirated copies of books we'd like, but not enough to pull the trigger.

On to Edward McKay Used Books & More, a North Carolina chain that is as much a music, movie and video games store as it as bookstore. Not much for us there. A lot of titles, but almost all newer editions, the kind of newer editions you'd find in a college bookstore.

Lastly, and without a lot of hope, we headed out past Wake Forest University to Piedmont Books. Again, this was a multi-purpose shop, but we were pleasantly surprised to find a moderately substantial classics section, in which we were able to improve our Anna Karenina collection by getting a Modern Library edition of the Leo Tolstoy work. Our only edition prior was a 2002 paperback, so a c.1934 copy was a much-needed "update."

So five stops total, and seven new additions. Not great, but we had a good time on the hunt, and on our visit to Winston-Salem. We'd definitely go back.

Book added: Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Publisher:  Random House, Modern Library

Year: c.1934

Where obtained: Piedmont Books, Winston-Salem, N.C.

Price: $4.00