It may be hot, but we need a second jacket

We've settled back into work and home life after our time off at the end of June, and while we were unloading our finds from our trip to Cincinnati, we noticed something was awry.

At one of our stops in Cincy, we found a really cool edition of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights that contained wood engravings by the famous engraver/illustrator Fritz Eichenberg. The thing that made it interesting was its dust jacket, which had the title, author's name, illustrator's name and publisher all printed directly onto the clear plastic dust jacket (you can feel each raised letter), so that if you removed the dust jacket, you remove all of that info from your book's cover.

It is definitely unique. Sadly, it also appears to be very fragile. Here's a pic of what it looked like when we bought it (left) and what it looks like now (right), after having it with other books in a shopping bag for the trip home. 

The "G" in "Wuthering" is now almost completely gone, the "N" isn't far behind, and other letters on that right-hand side are a little less full than they used to be.

Needless to say, this was alarming, especially since a big reason we added this book was because of the dust jacket. So we had to go to work to save it, or at least try to save it.

Our first stop was Random Row here in Charlottesville. In addition to being the place where we acquired the Eichenberg-illustrated Jane Eyre, we had learned a few weeks earlier in passing conversation with Ryan, Random Row's owner, that he personally covers many of his store's acquisitions with a clear plastic dust jacket. So we thought Ryan would be the perfect man for this job.

And we were right. Ryan said he hadn't seen a dust jacket like this one before, and he would certainly help us out. At first, it was determined that the plastic on our Wuthering Heights was too brittle and fragile to be flattened out and covered in the normal way Ryan would cover a book. In fact, we noticed that the dust jacket is already missing pieces, notably on the spine, from being chipped away as a result of nothing more than being opened and closed.

So we regrouped, and after being unable to find a suitable alternative to Ryan's plastic cover, we decided to make it work for us in a different way.

Rather than use a full dust jacket, we essentially cut a piece to the size of the cover, and just used it as an overlay for the front only, taping to on a couple of edges and to the inside of the cover.

It's not necessarily pretty, but it's a solution that will hopefully do the trick, for now anyway. If not, we're open to any further suggestions on the best way to preserve this unique edition.

Cincinnati is definitely a Riverside city

As we approached The Ohio Book Store, we gazed up at a five-story brick building, with bookshelves visible through the windows all the way. Kristian looked at me and asked "Are you ready?"

Boasting a collection of more than 350,000 books, the Ohio Book Store had us full of anticipation as we walked in the door. There was bound to be something here for us. It turns out there was a whole stack of somethings, starting at the bottom floor in the paperback classics section. I had a feeling that we might find some Riverside Editions -- it just looked like the kind of place that would have some. 

But the first thing I laid my hands on was a 1962 Signet Classic of The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Score! I actually got chills. We had collected all but Mohicans in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales in the Signet Classic printing and we really didn't expect to come across Mohicans any time soon, as it is the most popular of that series. The set has really interesting, colorful artwork on the cover -- it has a sort of stained-glass like appearance that we find very attractive. We're so excited to have all five now. Thanks Ohio Book Store! 

Next, seconds later, Kristian did indeed put his finger on a Riverside Edition -- The Octopus by Frank Norris. The fun thing about collecting this particular style of Riverside Editions -- simply because we like the look of the publication -- is that it means we get our hands on books and authors we have sometimes never heard of, thus broadening our literary horizons. (The Octopus was apparently first published in 1901 and was originally intended to be the first part in a trilogy that Norris never finished. It is about the conflict between California wheat growers and the Southern Pacific Railroad. We'll definitely read it one day.) 

Well, that find opened the floodgates and we found Riverside after Riverside, snagging six more for our collection -- the most we've ever found in one place. They included Ten Greek Plays, Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy, The American by Henry James, The Egoist by George Meredith, and Minor Classics of Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Volume 1. Sadly, we can only increase our total count of Riverside Editions by five -- we'd already found Minor Classics Volume I, but we thought we had Volume II. Since we couldn't remember we had to get it to be safe. Oh well. This version is in much better shape, so we'll replace the other. Our total count is up to 24. 

There are lots of great things about the Ohio Book Store -- many of which Kristian points out in his post -- but one very cool aspect is the fact that they have a bindery on the bottom floor of the store. They do amazing restorations of old books and have been in operation since 1940. As torch bearers for paper-paged, physical books, we are thrilled that places like the Ohio Book Store and its Bindery are going strong -- restoring and repairing the old books that we love and hope to keep around for a long time to come. We may have a couple to send their way...

Books added: The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper; The Octopus by Frank Norris; Ten Greek Plays edited by L.R. Lind; The Egoist by George Meredith; Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy; The American by Henry James; Minor Classics of Nineteenth Century Fiction, Volume I edited by William E. Buckler

Publishers (in same order):  New American Library, Signet Classics; Houghton Mifflin Company, Riverside Editions

Years: 1962; 1958; 1957; 1958; 1965; 1962; 1967

Where obtained: Ohio Book Store, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Price: $21.00 for all ($2.00 - $4.00 a book)

Fathers and Sons at Ohio Book Store

If you're ever within 100 miles of Cincinnati and are able to go, Ohio Book Store on the Queen City's Main Street is a must. One large building, five floors, approximately 350,000 (not a typo) books, and the nicest people you'll ever meet (more on them in a bit).

We had a small sense of what to expect before entering Friday, we had high hopes that we would walk out happy, and we were certainly not disappointed. Our first (very successful) stop was paperback fiction (which Deborah covers here), and after that, it was upstairs to the hardcover fiction.

A quick note about going upstairs: it was about 85 degrees in Cincinnati on Friday, and the floors above the main floor were where Ohio Book Store's AC didn't exist. We were headed to the third floor, so we were warned about what to expect. In short, it was pretty hot.

Deborah aptly likened what we found on the third floor to visiting the stacks in a university library. Just one giant, open floor with rows and rows of bookshelves stocked with books. The third floor wasn't only fiction, but it made up at least half of what we saw before us.

As we often do when we find large sections like this, we split up and each started from one end of the alphabet. I took Z, and as I worked my way backward, I collected:

• two Thornton Wilder works -- The Bridge of San Luis Rey (a personal favorite, and an edition published in the same year it won the Pulitzer Prize, 1928) and The Ides of March (on our to-read lists, this edition published in its original year of publication, 1948, as a "Book-of-the-Month Club" selection); 
• Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1921, the year after its original publication, and the year in which Lewis was initially awarded the Pulitzer, though the award was later given to Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence;
• A Modern Library edition of Six Modern American Plays. Eugene O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones"; Matthew Anderson's "Winterset"; George Kaufman and Moss Hart's "The Man Who Came To Dinner"; Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes"; Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie"; and Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan's "Mister Roberts" comprised the collection published in 1951.

Our daughter wasn't really digging the heat on the third floor, so she and Deborah headed back downstairs, leaving me to finish the floor. Forty minutes later, I emerged with one more book, which ties in nicely to the experience we had at Ohio Book Store.

The work I added to our collection was Fathers and Sons  by Ivan Turgenev. True, it is a book we already own (and it's a book I am currently reading). But this was a slipcase, Heritage Press edition (published in 1942) of Turgenev's novel illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg, whom we have come to appreciate via the work he did on copies we have of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. So now that we are on the lookout for Eichenberg-illustrated editions, this was one we had to have.

Fathers and sons is also an extremely important theme at Ohio Book Store, as it is run by James Fallon and his two sons, Mike and Jim. We had an opportunity to talk quite a bit with James and Mike (we also met Jim at the end of the day when we helped close the place down), and the Fallons are incredibly nice and welcoming people who really seem to love what they do. And since we love what they do, we were honored to meet them and be in their book store, even if only for an hour or so.

We'll spend a good deal of time on Get a Spine talking about the present and future of used-book stores, and this was one visit that left us extremely upbeat about the future. The eldest Fallon has been in the book business since he was in middle school, when he first started working at Ohio Book Store, and he bought the business in 1971. His sons both work there, too, and in addition to being booksellers, they run the store's book-binding operation.

We're not sure if the Fallon brothers have families and children of their own, but we get the feeling that if they do, the Ohio Book Store is one used-book store that we can count on being around for as long as we are. And that feeling makes us very happy.

Books added: Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev; The Bridge of San Luis Rey and The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder; Main Street by Sinclair Lewis; Six Modern American Plays, intro by Allan G. Halline 

Publishers (in same order):  Heritage Press; Grosset & Dunlap; Harper & Brothers; Harcourt, Brace and Company; Random House, Modern Library

Years: 1942; 1928; 1948; 1921; 1951

Where obtained: Ohio Book Store, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Price: $30.50 for the five

Tasty finds at the Iris BookCafe

If the possibility exists that we can find some good books and get some good food at the same place, we're there. Such was the case Friday at Iris BookCafe in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood.

We're not food reviewers, so we'll just keep it short and say that we didn't eat any better anywhere in Cincinnati than we did at Iris, even if all we had were two sandwiches and two cups of coffee. But everything was fresh and delicious, and the seating out back was really, really nice. A real garden oasis in the city.

As for books, the book store is moderately sized, and there is a sort of companion book/record store next door. For us, the fiction section was kind of in the middle of the layout, two decent-sized bookcases full of various works.

Given the number of books we had to choose from, we did well at Iris, walking out with seven new additions. First, a replacement copy of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina published in 1946 that is not only a significant upgrade from our much more modern version, but which also has illustrations done by Fritz Eichenberg, the same wood engraver/illustrator we'd been collecting. These are color illustrations, not engravings, and are very cool.

We also added a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories (1989) that is similar to a Hemingway collection we currently own; The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow from 1964; a Modern Library edition of Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith, for which he won the Pulitzer, published in 1946; a 1922 copy of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome: and a first-edition, third printing of John Steinbeck's The Moon is Down from 1942.

Last, but certainly not least even though it's true crime and not fiction, I had to get a "new" copy of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, a first printing "Book-of-the-Month Club" selection from 1966, the year after the story first started appearing in The New Yorker. I picked up that book one night in college and didn't put it down until it was done, but had loaned my copy only to never see it again... so I had to have this one, which is much better anyway.

All in all, Iris BookCafe was a real find, and a great way to start our book hunting on a Friday in Cincinnati.

Books added: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg); The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck; The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow; Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton; Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis; The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli; In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

Publishers (in same order): Doubleday & Company; The Viking Press; The Viking Press; Charles Scribner's Sons; Random House, Modern Library; Charles Scribner's Sons; Random House

Years: 1946; 1942; 1964; 1922; 1946; 1989; 1966

Where obtained: Iris BookCafe, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Price: $30 for the seven

Bookseller Review: Ohio Book Store

Ohio Book Store

726 Main St.

Cincinnati, OH

513.621.5142

www.ohiobookstore.net/index.html

The Ohio Book Store has five floors of books and magazines of all genres, ages, prices, etc. With nearly 350,000 items to choose from, if you can't find something here, you didn't really want anything to begin with.

What we like: Everything. We wish every city or town we visited had a book store like this. And the Fallons are just good people. Plus, even though we didn't get a chance to see it in action, the book bindery is a cool addition to the experience.

What we don't like: Honestly, we can't think of anything.  

Would we go again? We might go to Cincinnati again just for this store. So, yeah.

Bookseller Review: Iris BookCafe

Iris BookCafe

1331 Main St.

Cincinnati, OH

513.381.2665

irisbookcafe.com/

Iris BookCafe serves up fresh, local food alongside its vintage book collection. Iris carries books on architecture, art, fashion, philosophy, literature, poetry, drama, film, photography, cooking, famous gardens, Americana, and foreign language. Iris offers children’s books in many languages, and apparently hosts the largest collection of Polish books in Cincinnati.

What we like: Delicious food, tasty coffee, friendly people, a great outdoor seating area out back, and a small yet solid fiction section.

What we don't like: Given that we took home a decent number of books from relatively small fiction options, I guess our only complaint is that the fiction section wasn't larger!

Would we go again? We did well here as far as books, and the lunch was easily the best we had in our short stay, so definitely.

A find that makes sense, given where we were

Our last stop of Thursday (after this one and this one) was at The Dust Jacket in Cincinnati's very nice "Mt. Lookout" section of town.

It was easy to see from our first step into The Dust Jacket that this was a place for us. Wall to wall hardcovers of all ages, many of which we would have gladly taken home. But as one of our goals is to stay reasonably well budgeted in our collecting, a $475 first-edition of a lesser-known Hemingway novel wasn't going to be in our sights for very long, nor (though it was close) an N.C. Wyeth-illustrated edition of James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder for $55. That one was tough to leave behind.

We immediately struck up a conversation with The Dust Jacket co-owner Sam Jenike, who was extremely friendly and very welcoming. We told him who we were and what we were doing with Get a Spine, and proceeded to spend about an hour or so talking and perusing the store.

Sam and his business partner, Phil Metz, have been in business at The Dust Jacket for over 30 years, and they seem to still be going strong, which was great to see. It really is a terrific store, one of our favorites, for sure.

We learned a little about the history of the store and the books for sale at The Dust Jacket from Sam, and told some stories of our own, all the while making sure our little girl wasn't terrorizing the collection (we think we did OK, sorry, Sam, if we didn't!).

When it got down to the buying, we ended up settling on two books -- though we wanted more. The first adds another copy of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage to our collection. I am fairly certain that the copy I have is a high school paperback, and it's pretty lame, so this 1942 Modern Library edition (for $4) is a welcome upgrade to our shelves.

The more exciting find at The Dust Jacket, however, was one on Deborah's list -- sort of.

Back in April, Deborah found one half of a two-volume Brontë sisters set, a Jane Eyre/Wuthering Heights oversized combo box, with both books illustrated by the famous engraver Fritz Eichenberg. With Jane Eyre already in our possession, the companion volume is always a goal whenever we visit a book store.

Deborah inquired with Sam about whether they had what we were looking for -- of all the book stores we've visited, The Dust Jacket has easily had the most oversized-book, sleeved editions -- and Sam said he thought they might... but a search came up empty.

It wasn't until later in our visit that Deborah spotted the "Mini-me" version of what she'd been looking for. Wuthering Heights, illustrated/engraved by Eichenberg, but in a normal-sized book (published in 1946), not the oversized one we're after. But that's not even the best part about this $20 find. The dust jacket on this book -- found at The Dust Jacket -- was the most unique we've seen.

It was clear plastic like many others, and you could see through to the cloth binding and Eichenberg engraving on the cover. But the title, author's name, illustrator's name and publisher were all printed directly onto the clear plastic dust jacket (you can feel each raised letter), so that if you removed the dust jacket, you remove all of that info from your book's cover.

It may not be best way to describe it, but you'll have to trust us: it's pretty awesome.

Oh, and Sam was nice enough to give us the store's dealer discount of 10%. Thanks, Sam!

Books added: The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane; Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Publishers:  Random House, Modern Library

Years: 1942; 1946

Where obtained: The Dust Jacket, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Price: $21.60 for both

Two Significant finds in Cincinnati

Next on our map after the first stop of the day on Thursday was a place called Significant Books. I mean, how do you not go to a book store with that name?

Also north and east of downtown Cincinnati, Significant Books was only noticeable because we saw one street-level white door with an "Open" sign and handwritten sign that said "All books 65% off." Enticing, but when a sale is that deep, you know it can't be for good reasons. Upstairs we went.

In our research, we had found some info that Significant Books was a nonfiction store only. And while not entirely true, it is probably at least 90% true. So our shopping was pretty quick -- but fruitful.

We added another Modern Library edition, this one Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley from 1941, for $1.75 after the discount, and then Deborah found Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, published in 1945, in the dollar box, which meant that one was a whopping $0.35.

A couple of interesting things about these two books. First, we are fairly certain that this copy of Brideshead Revisited is the a first U.S. edition copy, which we are very excited about, and on the "open market" it seems to be selling for hundreds of dollars. We'd never sell, because that's not why we buy, but we mention the selling price out there in the world only to say that for $0.35, that seems a bit crazy!

Second, neither of us have yet read Antic Hay or Brideshead Revisited, but in our quick research of Antic Hay, it turns out that Brideshead Revisited actually mentions Antic Hay! Quite a coincidence, and reason enough to read those two back to back someday.

Borrowed from Wikipedia, here is the mention in Brideshead:

"Picture me, my dear, alone and studious. I had just bought a rather forbidding book called Antic Hay, which I knew I must read before going to Garsington on Sunday, because everyone was bound to talk about it, and it's so banal saying you have not read the book of the moment, if you haven't."

Lastly, while checking out, we had the opportunity to meet Significant Books' co-owner, Carolyn Downing. Carolyn is a lovely woman in her late 60s, and in our conversation we learned the reason for the 65% sale... Significant Books is trying to close its doors for good, so everything must go.

After 30 or so years at their current location, and longer than that in the book business, Carolyn and her husband, Bill, are calling it a day due to a multitude of factors (health primary among them), meaning another great used-book store is nearing its end. We certainly wish Bill and Carolyn the best as they move on to some new adventures (likely sometime this summer or by fall), and even though it was only a brief visit and we might not have made it back ever again, we're saddened to know that one of the great stores will no longer be out there.

Good luck, Carolyn and Bill!

Books added: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh; Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley

Publishers (in same order):  Little Brown and Company; Random House, Modern Library

Years: 1945; 1941

Where obtained: Significant Books, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Price: $2.10 for both

Lions and tigers and ... books? Oh my...

After a lovely Thursday morning spent taking our 8 1/2-month-old to her first zoo -- the very well-done Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden -- it was time to find some books.

We arrived in Cincinnati prepared with a long list of book stores to check out, and since we were already in the car for the day, we figured we'd first hit the ones that were not central to the downtown area.

The first stop, Smith & Hannon Bookstore, was an ominous start. Located north and east of downtown Cincy, it's a small, three-story house with the book store on the ground floor. Smith & Hannon was open ... but locked when we arrived. After commiserating with the DHL delivery guy about this oddity, we then heard a voice from upstairs telling us to just knock on the door and someone would answer.

Not that same guy, though, right? The logic being that if he was the one to come down and open up, why would he tell us to knock first, rather than just coming down to open the door himself? You know, since he already knew we were there...

We knocked... and sure enough, there that same guy was to greet us. Sadly for the DHL delivery guy, our greeter wasn't able to sign for the package being delivered, but soon enough the owner of Smith & Hannon appeared, making the delivery guy happy, and giving me an opportunity to enter the store.

Now, in those few minutes of waiting outside, I could tell that this was not likely to be the kind of store we were going to have any luck in. It was very small, and the editions looked newer and mostly nonfiction.

Once inside, I found that to be the case. Much of the store's fiction was more current. The one bookcase that had older books on it had a handwritten sign on it that said "These books are not for sale." Oh well.

But the five minutes in the store weren't without value. I had an opportunity to speak with Smith & Hannon's owner, and our brief conversation was an example of a familiar and troubling topic we'll end up talking a lot about on Get a Spine, and that's the often-troubling present and questionable future of used-book stores. 

One of the motivations we had in starting this project was our love of used-book stores, and the desire to play some small part in not only getting the personal experiences of visiting them, but also doing what we can to A) promote the bookstores we visit, so others will visit them also, and B) promoting the broad idea that used-book stores are important cultural, social and intellectual institutions that need to exist in our society.

And we're motivated by those two final reasons exactly because of the kinds of things I was told at Smith & Hannon today, which is something we hear often. 

The owner was an older woman -- the age of used-book store owners will also be a common theme in this space -- and I asked her how long she'd been in business, and she said it had been about seven years. I asked her where she gets her stock, and she said it was a combination of her own collection, visiting library sales, and donations. I asked her how it was going, and her reply was, "Oh, it's not." 

There was a lot of sadness in her voice when she said this, and I can't say what she was most sad about. Maybe it was feeling sad about people and where books and book stores fit in society. Maybe it was sadness about a struggling business and the need to make ends meet and pay the bills. Maybe it was neither, or both, or more.

Whatever the case may be, even if Smith & Hannon wasn't the book store for us, we sincerely hope that it's still around if we ever pass through Cincinnati again. That would be a welcome sign to us.

Bookseller Review: The Dust Jacket

The Dust Jacket

3200 Linwood Ave.

Cincinnati, OH

513.871.4224

www.abebooks.com/the-dust-jacket,-inc-cincinnati-oh/74439/sf

The Dust Jacket has a large collection of hardcovers books, especially leather-bound books. Their inventory has history, literature, mysteries, children's, art, religion, natural history and more, and ranges in price from low to high.

What we like: A book-lover's book store, we could have browsed for hours. Sam, a co-owner, is extremely friendly.

What we don't like: Tough to say. Maybe parking isn't the greatest there, depending on when you go? 

Would we go again? If we're ever back in Cincinnati, you bet we would. One of our all-time favorites. 

Bookseller Review: Significant Books

Significant Books

3053 Madison Rd

Cincinnati, OH

513.321.7567

www.significantbooks.com

Significant Books deals in out-of-print & antiquarian books. General books plus a speciality of science and technology.

What we like: If these guys dealt in classic fiction, we think this would have been the store to find some great additions to our library. We did find two nonetheless. And Carol, the co-owner, was very nice.

What we don't like: While some good deals are to be found, it's because they are going out of business! 

Would we go again? See above. I doubt we'll have the chance.