#Stack of books picture series

It also bears noting, as so many others have in this space, that the book trade is filled with an inordinate number of good and kind people I'm very thankful for the acquaintances and friends I've made so far.Ītypical and unromantic. It's really a wonderful support system for learning more about the things you'd like to learn more about. How seamlessly it dovetails with one's natural interests and curiosities. I'm happy to think of myself as a generalist, meaning I'm generally willing to try my hand at selling books in areas that interest me-whatever sticks, sticks. Last winter, I partnered with my colleagues at Better Read Than Dead Books to purchase the library of the late New York School poet Kenward Elmslie, and we issued a joint catalog of material from that collection.

I dabble in smut and the occult, and buy interesting LGBTQIA+ material whenever I see it. I've done one of artists' books (and am working on another). I've done a few catalogs of psychedelia and drug literature. While I still sell plenty of those, I've been developing specialties in 20th and 21st century counterculture. Like a lot of dealers I know, literary modern firsts were my stepping stone into the trade.

Anyway, Dividing Line struck me as catchy in a sort of cryptic way and so I went with it, never really thinking it would still be following me around six years later. The other was a copy of experimental poet Susan Howe's 1978 book, Secret History of the Dividing Line, which borrows its title from one of the two versions of Byrd's history-the bawdy 'secret' version, which he originally wrote in code. One was a cheap Dover edition of William Byrd's entertaining piece of 18th-century Americana, Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina. 'Dividing Line' was inspired by a couple of books that happened to be sitting on my shelf at the time. Rather than bring them all to our neighborhood bookshop (the peerless Magus Books, where many had come from in the first place), I decided to try my hand at selling some of the more collectible titles online. I had a library of several thousand books, reading copies mostly, which I was not prepared to schlep cross-country. I was living with my partner in Seattle, and we'd just made the somewhat precipitous decision to move to New York. I started selling books as Dividing Line in 2017. When did you open Dividing Line and what do you specialize in? So my journey has been mostly self-directed, with all of the struggles and set-backs that such a foolhardy approach entails. I didn't come up in the trade, and I've never had the good fortune to work for an established rare book firm, or even a general used book store. My transition into bookselling feels sometimes like an accident, at other times foreordained. Books have always seemed the most natural life accessory, and I've accumulated them in great numbers wherever I go. I got started in rare books through non-rare books, and in non-rare books through a love of literature, ideas, and the written word.

#Stack of books picture series

Our Bright Young Booksellers series continues today with Evan Miller, proprietor of Dividing Line Books in New York City: