#once upon a tome

[eli-zab3th]

"Being open about who you are can be a little scary, but I think that after you’ve explored your first dungeon, or been hounded through a forest by an unknown threat, you begin to worry less about the approval of others and more about whether you remembered to bring a torch."

- Once Upon a Tome, Oliver Darkshire

[liyazaki]

Once Upon A Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire

[emachinescat]

A Year in (Book) Review: My 2024 Reading Journey 📚

#47 - Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire

Nonfiction / Memoir / 254 pages / published 2022 / Finished June 4

One Sentence Review: This is one of the coziest books I've ever read - I learned so much about book collectors and sellers, but it didn't even feel like I was learning, because the author's voice was so funny, and even though I went into the book knowing virtually nothing about the world he inhabited at Southeren's, I connected to it instantly and deeply because of our shared passion for, and dedication to books.

Favorite Quotes

"The true spirit of book buying, as far as he was concerned, did not debase itself with trivialities like 'What will I eat later?' or 'How will I pay my rent?'."

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"All anyone can do is take reasonable precautions. Keep the books away from fire. Don't throw them in a puddle. And remember to take delight in them."

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"It's my belief that anyone worth knowing enjoys spending time in a bookshop."

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"In the queer community, there's a saying that you never really stop coming out of the closet. This is as true in a rare bookshop as it is anywhere else, though the extra cupboard space is often useful for storing books."

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"...there's someone for every book."

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"There's something quintessentially human about the need to be around books, and in taking comfort in their presence."

My rating: 5/5

A Few More Thoughts (Spoilers):

Charming, funny, informative, and genuine, this book was an absolute delight to read. Not only was it wildly entertaining and cozy - and laugh out loud funny - it was written by someone who clearly loves his work - and books!

I learned so much about book collecting and selling.

Everything about this book was interesting - not just the anecdotes and the history and antique book knowledge, but also the people who worked / work at Southeran's, as well as the author himself.

Although I do enjoy finding old books in thrift and antique stores, I will never be a serious collector, especially of the kind of really valuable books sold at places like Southeran's. Even so, this book left me with a better appreciation and understanding of the rare book world. It also made me want to learn book binding even more than I already did.

[zuzcreation]

Sarah Bolger as Aurora in Once Upon a Time s2 (x6)

[anotherfanaccount]

The problem, in a nutshell, is that collecting books is much more than a hobby. The sheer amount of space required to house most book collections means that whoever shares your living area needs to be very understanding, or more ideally a co-conspirator, because the rest of their lives will be spent making room for your incredibly invasive pastime, until one day they trip on a folio and plummet to their doom down a staircase.

The only real solution, I have begun to advise, is that your average book collector choose to live as a hermit. This is a foolproof way of avoiding judgement. Alas, in many ways the life of a book collector is doomed to the distraction of romance, if only because the zeitgeist is infected with the idea that a bookshop is a great place to romantically approach strangers, a plague for which romantic comedies have a great deal to answer.

Oliver Darkshire

Once upon a Tome

[slipperyliz]

thank you to whoever recommended Once Upon A Tome by Oliver Darkshire, the book about the rare bookshop, bc I just finished it and it's great. funny in my favorite way, full of characters, excellent use of footnotes, and it mentions my favorite bookseller. an excerpt:

I have cultivated at least one nemesis who routinely complains about my antics to the Booksellers Association, who rather distractedly notify us both every time that schoolyard spats don't really come under their purview. In many ways, this bookseller is one of my oldest and dearest correspondents, though I suspect he shall never know it.**

**If you're out there, and reading this, then I want you to know that you have no sense of humour and your complaint letters are the nectar of life to me.

[radedneko]

As a bookseller, you grow used to encountering cursed tomes every now and then. The regrettable part is that no one you inform about this will hold your claim credible, and it's very difficult to explain to your Accounts department, or the board of directors in their annual review, that a certain portion of the stock isn't really saleable because it keeps killing the customers who try to buy it.

~Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire

[hedonistbyheart]

Listening to Oliver Darkshire - the Sotherans guy's - book and the further in I get, the more I'm fully convinced he'd have a statement in the magnus archives.

[kandoros]

I first heard about this book through some reddit post, and upon reading the description I was unsure whether it was fantasy or nonfiction. A bookstore with a ghost? Well that might just be one of the stories of an old building. Customers described as Draculas, Spindlemen, and Smaugs? Possibly just artistic creativity, and the unhealthy opinion of humanity generated by any occupation dealing with the public. Or maybe it wasn't nonfiction. Maybe there really was an undead spirit haunting the lavatory, and they really did have patrons with scales or a sad aversion to garlic. I'm seventy pages in, having just finished a section where they have to inventory the store to hunt down some missing items which had been intended for sale in some tropical country, and therefore impregnated with a pesticide to prevent them being eaten by bugs. But now it was felt that the description should start off with "handle only while wearing thick leather gloves" instead of putting the warning AFTER the spells. Remembering how an early part of the Discworld novels start off by listing which books in the university library can only be read through smoked glasses or while taking a cold shower? I'm still not sure if this book is nonfiction. References to London merely moved the alternative possibility to 'urban' fantasy. And the author's name doesn't help matters. "Oliver Darkshire"? Sounds like an evil Dickensian hobbit.

[rainonsand]

Another day, another delightful Neil Gaiman story.

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EDIT: Where are my manners. The book in question is Once Upon A Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller

linktr.ee/oliverdarkshire

[hodgebros-blog]

REVIEW: Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller

Unrelated note, but I wish that the mobile app didn’t make my portrait so enormous. Or maybe I wish that my portrait looked nicer.

[mybookcafelife]

Once Upon a Tome | Oliver Darkshire

This was a delightful read. Who wouldn’t enjoy a book about booksellers, particularly antiquarian booksellers? This memoir describes how the author became an apprentice bookseller at an old bookshop in London. It was a clever and interesting look into the antiquarian book trade. Well written and packed with intriguing book-related information. I enjoyed his stories about cataloguing, book…

[pipperoni32-blog]

Once Upon A Tome

By Oliver Darkshire / 3 stars

A fun anecdotal book about life as an antique bookseller. I found that I enjoyed this more when I read it in small, 10 minute sections or a few chapters at a time, instead of trying to read it all in one or two settings. It kept me eager to come back to it.

I realized the more I read that I hadn't ever given much thought to the differences between booksellers and antique booksellers. I thought the primary connection would be a love of books, and wanting to surround yourself with them. Turns out, there are many differences. From the level of customer service - I like to imagine that regular booksellers look forward to seeing their customers - to the important difference that antique booksellers must always remember the value of books. Not only that, but their salability They deal in rare, expensive books, and it's not simply enough that a book is old and valuable. They must be able to sell it, the sooner the better.

On top of the strange characters that occupy the bookshop full time, there were the even stranger customers. Providing oddities and entertainment, this was a fun read, if a little bit slow at times.

[anotherfanaccount]

There is something about geriatric men which attracts them to dangerous ladders. Unless you are very careful to hide anything with steps, you invariably end up shouting 'Mr. Beekman, please come down' to a cackling octogenarian daredevil as he teeters above a deadly three-foot fall.

-Oliver Darkshire, Once Upon a Tome

Filled with such genuine life events of an apprentice of world's oldest bookshop (apparently one of), this book is a keeper in your bookshelves.

[anoddrock]

Okay! Just realized there was a mostly blank spread in my recent sketchbook, so I glued a bunch of school doodles in!! Enjoy!!

Including the Once Upon A Time(In Space) twins(pre wedding assasinations), Amity(TOH), and a collection of Loose Stitches(by @nerves-nebula) fanart on the left page! Also some tortles bc of course there are.

The right page and stuff I didn’t mention on the left is all original characters and stuff

Reblogs appreciated

[radedneko]

Reader, I did the unthinkable and interrupted him. [...] Hell hath no fury, they say, like a man treated the same way as he treats women. He sputtered. He turned a shade of red that traveled upwards across his body as in a cartoon character, and to this day I would swear under oath that his head actually inflated a few inches.

I asked him to let us get on with our work, which caused him to spin in a spiral of angry comments, threatening to speak to the manager.

~Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire