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.

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

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.