Despite all the Internet has done to make prices transparent and bibliographic information universal, you can still find - at book sales and thrift shops, auctions and even fancy dealers - unrecognized or underpriced rarities. Getting something valuable for cheap is the basic, greedy thrill of book collecting.

Raised in a house filled with old books, I'm drawn to them: the dust jackets that call out a historical moment, the marbled boards, the words pressed into the page with movable type.

Book collecting is a largely solitary, mostly male, and completely absorbing activity.

Jacob Weisberg Quotes