The Spine Nine: Popeks Books

One stop on our Northeast trip was to Popeks Books in Oneonta, N.Y. We had learned about this shop via the book blog "Forgotten Bookmarks," which is run by Michael Popek, the owner of Popeks Books. Michael was kind enough to participate in our recurring series of Q&A with bookstore owners called "The Spine Nine."

Thanks, Michael!

Name: Michael Popek
Bookstore: Popeks Books

1. When did you know you wanted to be a bookstore owner? Why? I didn't wake up one morning and realize it, it took a long time to settle into the job. Our shop is a family business, so I've been helping out with the books since I was pretty young. My wife and I moved back here from the West Coast in 2001 to help out with the store when my father became ill. I slowly got more and more involved, and here I am.

2. Do you have a book which is your white whale? If so, would you actually sell it? Everything is for sale. Being a bookseller means you have to appreciate books, but it can be trouble if you become attached. I have my own little collection of oddball baseball titles, that's as far it goes. Having access to so many cool books means that it's easy to start taking them home. All of that said, if a really early translation of "The Odyssey" drifted into the shop, I'd have a hard time letting it pass by, no matter what the price.

3. If you could assume the life of any character from a classic work of fiction, who would it be and why? Most of my favorite classic characters have rather tragic literary lives, I'm not sure I'd want to walk in their shoes. To give you an answer, how about Montgomery Brewster?

4. What was the experience of selling your first book like? To be honest, I don't even remember. I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and it was likely during one of the book sales we'd have before we had an open shop. A couple of tables set up on the front porch, a few calls made to local dealers, clear out some inventory.

5. The Kindle/Nook/etc. is ... Great for booksellers, they just don't realize it. My full opinion is here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/10/27/im-a-used-bookseller-and-im-not-afraid-of-e-books/

6. Describe your most memorable acquisition experience. I could probably tell you the story of picking up a first edition / first state of "On The Road" or even finding the first and original Latin translation of Beowulf, but the most memorable was a house call I went on about 10 years ago. The sale had already been arranged, I was just there to pick up the books. Which were in an old barn. In the loft. That had no ladder. I get up there by standing on the roof of our van only to find I wasn't alone. There were hundreds of millions of ladybugs, more than half of them dead. Six inches deep, in every box, down every spine, between the pages. The books weren't even that great, but I loaded them up anyway. I still find the occasional ladybug at the bottom of a box, and I wonder if it came from that barn.

7. If classic novelists were like rock stars or athletes, which three posters would be on your walls? I suppose Hemingway would have to be up there, he was quite a sportsman anyway. Homer and Aeschylus can round out the trio.

8. In 25 years, used-book stores will be ... Smaller in numbers, more specialized, but very much alive and thriving.

9. If someone wrote a novel about your bookstore, what would it be called? Sisyphus -- seems like I'm always moving entire sections of books around, only to move them again in three months.

Wuthering twice

Back in April, I discovered a really interesting edition of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre with illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg. It was our first introduction to Eichenberg's wood engravings -- they are beautiful and haunting and we love them. The Jane Eyre we found was apparently part of a box set with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and so we've been on the lookout for Jane's companion ever since. We imagined it would be a long time before we found it to complete the set -- especially on its own.

We're in Cooperstown, NY, this week, visiting family and doing a bit of book hunting, and Tuesday we made a trip to Oneonta, NY, and stumbled upon Rose and Laurel Bookshop when we stopped on Main Street to have some lunch. When we walked in I noticed a section of large books in sleeves, and I made a beeline for them to scan for the Wuthering Heights.

On first glance it seemed they were all of the newer sort, so I moved down the shelves. For some reason my eye darted upward once more, and there, resting on its side on the top shelf, I saw that green spine with gold letters that looked so much like the Jane Eyre spine... only much thinner. I snatched it and gasped, then ran over to Kristian with it behind my back and said, "Guess what I found?!" I was practically jumping up and down. He was as shocked as I was that we actually found it -- we were both a bit open-mouthed. But as we calmed down, we realized that the front cover did not have an engraving the way the Jane Eyre did -- otherwise they seemed the same. Same size, Eichenberg illustrations all throughout. (We had previously found a mini-version of the Eichenberg-illustrated Wuthering.) Though we wondered why and if it was truly the match, there was no way we were walking out of the shop without that book. We might never come across it again... we were so excited! We did find more at the Rose and Laurel, but Kristian will tell you more about that.

With that now checked off our list, we made a quick visit to Willis Monie Books, the used bookshop in Cooperstown. Sadly on this day, our daughter was due for a nap when we had an opportunity to sneak down there, so we were sort of pushing our luck with the visit and had to rush through it.

We split up, and I was one aisle over from where Kristian was looking. We weren't there 10 minutes when I heard a groan and then Kristian called me over. He had a book behind his back and a sort of rueful grimace on his face. "What did you find?!" I asked. From behind his back he produced Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Eichenberg illustrated, with a brooding Heathcliff engraving on the cover. Unbelievable! This was the one! For a book we thought we might never find, it took less than 24 hours to find two! We discovered that the one without a cover illustration was actually the older version, by two years, published in 1943. The one with the cover illustration, the one that also has the matching Jane Eyre, was published in 1945. Tag, you're it, 1943 version of Jane Eyre...

Book added: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (x2!)

Publisher: Random House

Years: 1945; 1943

Where obtained: Willis Monie Books; Rose and Laurel Bookshop

Price: $5.00; $6.00

We will not forget to return to Popeks

One website we discovered while creating Get a Spine is called "Forgotten Bookmarks." We had had a similar idea to have a series on Get a Spine to tell about the various items we find inside of the books we acquire, and we call that series "Left in the Leaves," but Forgotten Bookmarks is the gold standard by which our idea had to be measured ... and honestly, we might not even win the bronze in comparison.

It's a great site, very well done, and almost always has a fun/interesting post about something found inside the pages of a used book.

While preparing Get a Spine for launch and digging a little bit deeper on Forgotten Bookmarks, I discovered that the site was run by the same person who owns a used-book store about 20 miles from where I grew up in Central New York. So that bookstore, Popeks Books, quickly became a must-visit on our trip to the Northeast, and Tuesday we had our first opportunity to check it out.

We were fortunate to meet the bookstore's extremely nice owner, Michael, and talk to him a little bit about his bookstore and how he got into the book business. We hope that we'll have a Spine Nine from Michael to share soon, but suffice it to say for now that the origin of Popeks Books is one of the better stories we've heard about people getting into the used-book business.

The short version is that there was an auction about 30 years ago, and at this auction was a van that was on the block for $100... but there was one catch. It was full of used books. The Popek family wanted the van, got the books with it, and then needed to do something with them, so...

As it also turns out, Michael's cousins were high school acquaintances of mine, one being a couple of years older and the other being in my class of 95 people. Small world.

Once again, our daughter's napping schedule meant this visit would be fairly brief, but to be honest, there's so much at Popeks Books that we'd need a good couple of hours to feel like we gave the bookstore the attention it requires. So we'll definitely be back, though we did score a few items on this visit:

• Deborah found, on the 50-cent rack, an interesting amalgamation of Natty Bumppo's life throughout James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales." It's called The Leatherstockig Saga, and it takes all of the parts throughout the five books that specifically pertain to Deerslayer/Hawkeye/Pathfinder/Leatherstocking and puts them together in the chronological order of his life (which is not the way the books were first published in their day) to trace the path of his life throughout the five novels. I don't usually like abridged versions of anything, but I have to say that I am pretty interested to check this one out sometime.
• another Riverside to add to the collection! Joseph Andrews  by Henry Fielding. 
• a Modern Library double-William Faulkner collection, containing the novels The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. I've once sat on the town square in Oxford, Mississippi reading some Faulkner, so I am kind of excited about this find. 
• last, but definitely not least, we added two John Steinbeck works, one being an upgrade over a high school-era copy of Of Mice and Men, the other being our first copy of The Grapes of Wrath. Both are in great shape, with the copy of Of Mice and Men being a second-printing done in the work's original year of publication, 1937. There is the number "200" stamped on the inside of the back cover,  but it's hard to tell if this means anything as far as determining the origin of the printing. Regardless, it is an excellent find, and I can't imagine we're likely to come across a better version of this classic that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. The edition of Grapes is also excellent, it's an 11th printing, done in 1940, one year after the work was first published. It's missing its dust jacket, but the cloth cover has an interesting illustration of the migration during the Dust Bowl. I've never read Grapes, but as a fan of Mice and The Pearl, reading Steinbeck's epic has been high on my list for quite some time, so I am excited about this find.

Score one for Popeks Books, and consider us always interested in coming back anytime we are in the area.

Books added: Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding; The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; The Leatherstocking Saga edited by Allan Nevins; Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Publishers (in same order): Houghton Mifflin Riverside Editions; Random House Modern Library; Avon; Covici Friede; Viking Press

Years: 1961; 1946; 1982; 1937; 1940

Where obtained: Popeks Books

Price: $18.00 for the five

Sometimes no plan is the best plan

Our first stop on our trip to Central New York wasn't a planned one. On Tuesday, we were in Oneonta, NY -- home to Hartwick College, the State University of New York at Oneonta, and the James Fenimore Cooper Society, as well as being the former home of the National Soccer Hall of Fame -- to have a little lunch before hitting a bookstore we had planned to visit.

But our parking spot in downtown Oneonta just happened to be in front of a bookstore called "The Rose and Laurel Bookshop." So after a bite to eat, we hit The Rose and Laurel before hitting our known destination.

While our daughter latched on pretty quickly to a Steinbeck novel, Deborah and I collected seven works to take home with us. One of them Deborah talks more about here, while the other six were a random collection chosen for different reasons:

• Eichenberg! As we've mentioned many times, we have started to be on the lookout for Fritz Eichenberg-illustrated/wood-engraved works, and we found an awesome copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which is an all-time favorite. This edition appears to date from about 1940 or so.
• a visually striking and well-preserved 1887 edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, with "an introductory account of the work by the author."
• another Riverside Edition for our collection, A Modern Instance by William Howells, published in 1957.
• a 1950 Modern Library edition of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which is a definite upgrade over our current copy. I've not read Brothers yet, but I am definitely looking forward to reading more Dostoyevsky.
• George Orwell's Animal Farm, another personal favorite, likely a book club hardcover edition from 1946, the year after it first appeared in print.
• A copy of David James Duncan's The River Why, which Deborah picked up in order to return a loaned copy back to the person who gave it to her.

So, all in all, this was a very successful stop that we hadn't planned on making. Count us as fans of The Rose and Laurel Bookshop!

Books added: Crime and Punishment  by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe; A Modern Instance by William D. Howells; The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Animal Farm by George Orwell; The River Why by David James Duncan

Publishers (in same order): The Heritage Press; Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Houghton Mifflin Company Riverside Editions; Random House Modern Library; Harcourt, Brace and Company; Bantam Books 

Years: 1940(?); 1887; 1957; 1950; 1946; 1984

Where obtained: The Rose and Laurel Bookshop

Price: $30.00 for the six

Bookseller Review: Rose and Laurel Bookshop

The Rose and Laurel Bookshop

273 Main St.

Oneonta, NY

607.432.5604

www.abebooks.com/rose-and-laurel-bookshop-oneonta-ny/72680/sf

The Rose & Laurel Bookshop is a brick-and-mortar store started in 1977 and is located in upstate New York. They have mainly used and out-of-print books, both paperbacks and hardcovers. They stock many first edtions and have a good collection of local and upstate NY history.

What we like: This place had the feel of a booklover's quaint little bookshop. Not too big, not too small, good variety, and for us, a nice section of classics.

What we don't like: Well... our daughter's legs got really dirty crawling around on the floor... does that count?  

Would we go again? Yes. This was one we stumbled upon by accident, but when we pass through Oneonta in the future, we'll definitely stop.

Bookseller Review: Popeks Books

Popeks Used and Rare Books

457 Chestnut St.

Oneonta, NY

607.431.9870

www.popeks.com/

Popeks Used and Rare Books is an independent bookseller which has a wide variety of titles in practically every subject area or interest. They're a family business that has been selling books for around 30 years.

What we like: Multiple classic fiction sections, friendly owner, and solid prices. A large selection of books, rivaling the number to be found in many bookstores located in much larger cities.

What we don't like: It was a little hard to figure out how the store was organized at first, but who doesn't enjoy a good hunt?  

Would we go again? Definitely. We didn't have enough time the first time through, and thankfully we'll have more opportunities to stop by as we continue to visit family throughout the year.