A pound of paper: confessions of a book addict

Enter a world of detail-obsessed book collectors in this addictive memoir. By the 1960s, a copy of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock without its dust jacket was worth about $1,000, while one with the jacket could fetch around $4,500, and a perfect jacket copy sold for over $100,000. John Baxter caught the collecting bug in 1978 when he discovered a rare copy of Greene’s The Little Horse Bus for just 50¢. That day, he also met Martin Stone, a legendary figure in the bookselling world, who became his mentor and friend. This brilliantly readable and humorous memoir introduces readers to the fanatical world of book collectors, from those who buy at auctions to the sleuths who use cunning to track down rare finds. Along the way, we encounter eccentric characters like Driff Field, who exclusively collects books about suicide or by authors who have taken their own lives. The narrative features completists, condition freaks, and a host of rich and famous collectors, including Barry Humphries and Sarah Michelle Gellar. This entertaining memoir is sure to captivate the literati and anyone intrigued by the passion of book collecting.