New documentary film: The Booksellers

General
#1

Coming out this week (March 6), looks great! https://booksellersdocumentary.com/

Antiquarian booksellers are part scholar, part detective and part businessperson, and their personalities and knowledge are as broad as the material they handle. They also play an underappreciated yet essential role in preserving history. THE BOOKSELLERS takes viewers inside their small but fascinating world, populated by an assortment of obsessives, intellects, eccentrics and dreamers.

Executive produced by Parker Posey, the film features interviews with some of the most important dealers in the business, as well as prominent collectors, auctioneers, and writers such as Fran Lebowitz, Susan Orlean, Kevin Young and Gay Talese. Both a loving celebration of book culture and a serious exploration of the future of the book, the film also examines technology’s impact on the trade, the importance of books as physical objects, the decline of used and rare bookstores, collecting obsessions, and the relentless hunt for the next great find.

Playing at The Quad in NYC this weekend: https://quadcinema.com/film/the-booksellers/

With some special appearances / Q&As at these showings:

  • Friday 3/6 7pm
  • Sat. 3/7 2:30pm and 7pm
  • Sun. 3/8 2:30pm and 4:45pm

Thinking of going to one of these, not sure yet but maybe the Sat. 2:30pm showing? (That one features a Q&A w/ the Director + owner of the Strand). Anyone interested?

Also, Left Bank Books, one of the stores featured, is pouring drinks 5-8pm on Friday, so could meet there before the Friday screening which also works! (They’re giving 15% off any purchase w/ ticket stub from the film, so could stop by after the Saturday showing to browse…)

(Limited release but looks like it’s playing in ~20 other cities as well, see here!)

#2

Just a quick update to mention that I did see this film and really enjoyed it! While the focus on antiquarian booksellers is not typically the slice of book culture I’m most interested in, they did a good job interviewing a diverse lineup of booksellers and adjacent ~people of book culture~ and it was nicely done. Very interesting to learn about how the world of collecting and selling physical books continues to evolve.

#3

I actually just rewatched this and it was interesting to see them mention the selling of archives as the new thing since the internet basically destroyed rare bookselling for many. It made me think of digital gardening and how individuals that do this are building an archive of their own.

1 Like
#4

Wow this was almost exactly a year ago and the last large public thing I went to in NYC before covid.

For sure really interesting to think about parallels with personal archives. Lots of ways to think about it, like both my personal repository of folders of pdfs and other downloads I have locally, and my meta-archive or digital antilibrary of all the sites I’ve bookmarked etc.

And balancing those digital archives with physical libraries…I have lots of physical books but try not to get attached to them like a collector. Ideally I like the idea of universally accessible digital copies of rare books so cost isn’t a barrier. But also plenty of books that exist largely as art objects and digitization may not make sense. At the high end bookselling I guess is already like the fine art market and maybe becoming more so.

#5

Watched this on a streaming service called Kanopy, which is provided by my local library which I highly recommend using if you haven’t started yet.

Makes me want to start purchasing more obscure weird texts, as well as improve on my slowly growing book collection. Also, one thought I had is that the next time I purchase a book I want to go to a local book store rather than purchasing through Amazon.

Was so inspired by the flick, that Abby & I are now going to check out some of the local bookstores in our area that we have yet to visit for some Sunday fun. The hope as always when going to a bookstore is to find some more enticing reads to add to the collection.

Now the next challenge, is to ensure that I actually read some of them!

Thanks for sharing, and happy to join the forum.

-Adam

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#6

Nice, haven’t tried Kanopy but been using Libby for library ebook borrowing, really great mobile app.

Have fun w/ the bookstore browsing!

Also this topic may be useful: Non-Amazon Online Book Ordering?

Always fun to stumble on some obscure maybe-out-of-print book for like five bucks that looks fascinating and you probably don’t know anyone who’s read it. I’m definitely more into collecting stuff that feels fun / strange / unique rather than e.g. first editions or “valuable” books.

Couple other fun topics here to check out: