* * *
Dear OKB:
I confess, when I first found you, I thought you were - oh, what is that phrase? - too rich for me..."rare and out-of print bookseller." What made me reconsider my too-swift and incorrect opinion was the following sentence: "Our database contains the world's largest inventory of books about books and bibliography."
You see, I was looking for a magazine about books and book collecting due to finding a lone copy of it in my public library's Friends of the Library magazine sale. The cover was Anne Rice when she was still writing scary, fantastic stories of vampires and witches, before that period that she, shall we say, chose not to write those stories any longer.
BIBLIO, Issue 3, Volume 10. And all mine for a dime! I went home and devoured it. I hadn't had such good magazine reading about books since I quit my subscription to BOOK when it merged with B&N, but that's another story for another time and with liquor present...
When I finished my copy of BIBLIO, I immediately hit the all-great and powerful Google in search of more copies and a possible subscription.
Nothing.
Nothing in the top ten hits. Nothing in the top 20 hits. I won't embarrass myself further by saying just how long I kept searching the list of return hits. Then I switched tactics (and search terms) and there you were...patiently waiting for me to stumble upon you.
Graciously welcomed, and my questions kindly considered and swiftly answered. BIBLIO was most certainly out-of-print, and had been for nearly 11 years. However, there was the entire print run, in good condition, within a price I could afford.
Dear OKB, do you know the scene in the book and the movie where Helene Hanff opens her book packages from Marks & Co? How excited she was when they arrived? This is how excited I was when I hauled my box from you into my home (all 19 lbs of it!) and it sat there in its brown paper wrapping.
How beautiful my order was packaged, extra layers of cardboard to protect the pages and spines from being crushed in transit. The order itself wrapped in brown paper and sealed with more cardboard inside them to keep their shape. It was almost a shame to pull the paper off the magazines. You know how to set a woman's heart racing, don't you? Or at least *this* woman's heart.
And the magazines were everything I had hoped they would be from the description on your shop's website. The condition is excellent, the paper is in fine shape, the colors are still vibrant. Oh, and the lovely scent of the printed page...
I will now disappear from the world for a bit and get lost in the world that was once BIBLIO.
Many thanks, and with unabashed affection,
Me
