Mystery Book

I'm counting on the knowledge and expereince of fellow bibliophiles for help with this one. I have a book titled The Charm of Venice, an Anthology. It was compiled by Alfred H. Hyatt, with illustrations by Harald Sund. The publisher is the Musson Book Company, Toronto. There is no copyright date. The book has green covers with gold lettering.

The mystery is that I cannot find this edition of this book in my usual lookup sites. It's not on addall, Alibris, Amazon....and I also can't find much information on the publisher. I do know that the publisher existed in the late 1800s.

Can anyone shed some light on this title, the publisher, and when it might have been published?

Mark

My Dream Library!!!

I have seen this circulating on various blogs for the last couple of days. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out here!
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all

This is the library of Jay Walker, the Internet Entrepreneur who created, among other things, Priceline.com.

The library is over 3000 square feet!

This is exactly how I want my library to look. How about you?

How I Got Started, Where I Want to Go

First of all, a well earned plug - if you haven't read Chris Lowenstein's blog, the Book Hunter's Holiday, you have no idea what you have been missing!! Fortunately, due to the wonders of technology, you can read that blog's archives and get up to speed!! The Book Hunter's Holiday is one of my three or four favorite bookseller blogs. Chris writes in a clear and entertaining way about her adventures (the best of times, the worst of times, and everything in between!) as a bookseller. Check it out!

Now, how I got started into the world of books. I have always been a voracious reader. From grade school until now, my favorite subjects have always been English and Literature. When I was about 11 or 12, I was bitten by the collecting bug. I collected baseball cards, I collected postage stamps, I collected rocks, I collected newspaper clippings of my beloved Boston Celtics....I just loved collecting (Today, they refer to this as my pack-rat tendencies, but I have been much better in recent years.). One day, my father presented me with a gift of "some old books" that were left over from an estate he helped settle (he was a bank Trust Officer). The prize of these books was a three volume set of the Works of Shakespeare (more on those in a future post). To my young eyes, they were beautiful! I was hooked - that's all it took. Without any proper knowledge of the book trade, and having no idea what an antiquarian book was, I started to collect any book that "looked" beautiful.
Over the years I have sold and donated and acquired books informally, and gave a lot away when I moved out of my parent's home. But all of those original books from Dad remain with me today. More recently in my life, I was bitten by another bug - the entrepreneurial bug. Wanting to self employed, and still having a love of books, I have taken a new path in my life. Together with my VERY-soon-to-be-wife Andrea (March 14!!!), and our children, our family business has begun. For now, Literary Musings is operating without a specific focus, just trying to sell whatever we can acquire (new, old, children's books, non-fiction, fiction....) but as we gain more experience and perspective our business plan will evolve as well. I would like to see more antiquarian books in our inventory, but this will take time and patience. Once we have moved out West, I would like to attend the Rare Book School that is offerred in Colorado every year. I would like to eventually have a brick-and-mortar store as well.
I would love to hear from other readers how they got started in their love of books - whether you are a bookdealer, a book collector, or a reader.

Getting married!!

Thought I would just share with you all that Mark and I are getting married on March 14th!! We are having just a small ceremony right now with something bigger in the next few months!! It has taken so long for these stupid divorces to be final that we just want to be married now!! So look for more news about our upcoming event as well as pictures!!! We really should write a book about our relationship and the crazy dips and turns it has taken for us to get to where we are now. We are so in love and look forward to a long and happy life with each other and with our kids!!!

Whimsical and Significant

Can whimsical artwork ever be considered significant? Dr. Seuss would say yes. Robert McCloskey, Eric Carle, H.A. Rey, Leo Lionni and other noted children's book authors and illustrators would too. But for the longest time, most art collectors would laugh at the idea of The Cat In the Hat being called a work of art. Times are changing. Popular opinion is beginning to understand what children's book collectors have known all along: children's book art IS art. This AP article from Saturday is an eye-opening read.

In addition to the 2-dimensional children's picture book, let's not forget about the favorite of favorites, from a child's eye: the 3-dimensional pop-up books!! These books helped our beloved characters burst from the pages in their full color glory! Dinosaurs! Pirates! Firetrucks! Books made even more appealing, because you didn't just read them, you played with them! Ahh, the good old days!

Finding pop-up books with popups intact is the challenge for booksellers.