Titles, Inc.

What The Dickens!

All's well that ends... no, that's Shakespeare.  We're talking Dickens here which also works for this situation: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

A young man called to ask me to get him a beautiful copy of  A Tale of Two Cities as a birthday present for his mother who was turning 80.  He was willing to spend "a couple of hundred" but would go higher if needed for a nicer copy.

I located two copies from the same dealer in London.  One was $200, one was $300 (I get my dealer 20% discount.)  I emailed the dealer.  I said, "Of course you like the more expensive one better, but tell me why, so that I can pass the information to the customer."  One had a black leather spine, but the pretty one had a maroon leather spine and corners, lots of shiny gilt, pictures.  No contest.  I placed the order with my credit card, and the book arrived quickly.

The book was packaged lovingly, and I had to paw through a carton of plastic bubbles to retrieve it. There is was, a slim book bound in full tan leather, very handsome, very elegant, an early edition embellished in gilt.  Yummy, this is grander than I expected.  The bill fell out: L2220.  That's English pounds.  Maybe $3500.  After I recovered from my dead faint, I staggered to the computer.  It was with a little embarrassment that I told him I was talking hundreds, not thousands, and could we correct this little error (like take that $3000 off my credit card!)

He was profusely apologetic, and said, "It was rampant wishful thinking on my part clearly." 

The exchange was made or as he said, "two cities part two is on its way to you and should you require a pound of flesh, I shall feel compelled to accept responsibility." mixing up Shakespeare with Dickens, too.  The new maroon one looked dandy.  Our young man picked it up and loved it.  

He phoned to say his mother was speechless with joy.  So again, all's well that ends well, except that the fellow continued, "Could you believe I fell again?  I broke some ribs, re-injured my broken shoulder, need another MRI to see whether I broke my back again.  I thought that since I could pull myself up, I wasn't too damaged.  I should have been wearing my back brace.  I didn't go to the hospital even though I was in such pain because I had to go to my mother's party to give her the book. 

Now there's a person who has his priorities straight.

---Florence

Old Books, New Stories

In her phone call she said she had a collection of books from the 1700s and 1800s.  I ask for a few examples and I am intrigued.  They are not her books, they are from her deceased brother.  She asked, “Shall I email a list?”  Yes, indeed.  We talked.  Her brother was a genius, and she related enough anecdotes to confirm it.  “How old was he when he died?”  “64.”   I murmured, “Too young.  What did he die of?”  She said, “His partner got mad at something he said, so he hit him on the head with his cane.  He died after days in a coma.  And the partner died of a heart attack three weeks later."  So there is a lot to settle up and she’s starting with the books which she had a mover ship across the states to her house. 

Her list arrived (with the letterhead reading Attorney at Law.)  I researched the books carefully, and we made an appointment for after her welding class and before her doctor appointment.  I brought my check.

On entering her house I was overwhelmed by the crafts and art on the walls, on the surfaces, on the floor.  The American Indian hangings were done by her mother (who was not a Native American), the metal fish form was a product of the new welding venture, the large colorful patchwork throw she made from felted sweaters (felting happens when you wash wool in very hot water – the yarn becomes dense fabric),  a big bowl on the coffee table contained knitted cupcakes.  There was so much to look at I almost overlooked the two saddles and the many award ribbons hanging above them attesting to her skills at horsemanship.

There were two framed early magazine covers enlarged to poster size of a stunning blonde model, our hostess.  A photo showed this same beauty cozying up to an incredibly handsome man.  “Who’s he?” I asked.  “My fiancé.  He was killed.”  I said, “Oh, I thought it was your brother who was killed.”  She said, “My brother was killed.  But this was my fiancé.  He was bludgeoned to death.  A week before our wedding.”  We both stood looking at the photo.  In a lighter tone, “Since then I was married and divorced three times.”  And laughing, because it really was funny, “All three of them had the exact same birth date!”  She said the first thing she asks a man when she meets him is his birth date.  “At least now I know one thing about a man that doesn’t work for me.”

She lived on a Navaho reservation.  She designed clothes for her boutique on Maui. 

She worked as a deep-sea diver with others who brought up bodies lost in tragic boat accidents at sea.  Once she found two people huddled in an air bubble in a rock formation who survived.  She said, “People ask how could you do that, it’s ghoulish.  But I know I was giving a gift to their families.”  I agreed.

She said in high school she was told she was not college material, that she should continue with home economics.  Even her parents regarded her as an underachiever.  “Compared to my genius brother, I was.”  But she got a degree in philosophy, a Masters in psychology, and a law degree. 

Finally, we went to the books.  The cataloging had overlooked a major flaw.  Too many of the fragile leather books had detached covers.  She’s sure they were damaged in the move, that the movers piled the books into the shipping cartons without regard to the treasures they are.  Just old books.  I had computed prices on their being intact.  Now I made new notes and I will have to revisit the project.

And I will have to revisit my new friend.  Never mind the books.  Will there be more stories?

---Florence

A Dog is Not a Squirrel

Even Jane wrote, “Amazing!!!  What are the odds!!!”  Because almost immediately after Jane’s poignant story about rescuing a little doggy roaming loose in the hills of LA, I found myself in a situation of rescuing a playful dog bounding up to my moving car on my neighborhood street.  I thought this was a weird coincidence.

Not weird after all. 

Jane’s story about her dog rescue was a Public Service Announcement of the best kind.  It was Informational.  It said Pay Attention.  It was an Alert.  

Before reading it I never noticed dogs.  So I never noticed unattended dogs.  Of course no dog should be on the neighborhood street without its person (as Jane puts it) in attendance.  Every dog is required to be leashed or closely guarded. 

But I never “saw” them.  A dog never registered in my consciousness.  Who knows how many dogs ran past me after gleefully escaping their confines.  I paid no more attention to them than the squirrels scurrying in front of the moving car.

The charming episode of Jane’s finding a dog and reuniting it with its joyful family made this wandering dog romping around my car real.  I saw him this time.  I did what Jane’s Instructional taught me to do. 

The lesson?  Be aware!  See?  There is always something new to learn.

---Florence

Naughty Dog

Now this was weird.  Remember Jane’s letter about rescuing wandering dogs and returning them to their owners?  I knew that I had never looked at any dog and worried it might have sauntered out of his yard.  Dogs is dogs.

Not this one.  I turn into my neighborhood and drive very slowly, not that there are ever any kids playing in the street anymore, but the habit is now fixed.  Then I notice trotting beside my car on the passenger side, a tall brown dog.  As I watch, he quickens his pace so that he is now trotting in front of the car.  Then I can’t see him so I stop abruptly and back up, scared.  He strolls away from the front fender and moves again to the side. 

I start rolling slowly and again he moves to the front as if leading me.  I stop.  I honk.  He walks around to my side.  I drive and he lopes beside the car.  I stop.  I open the door slowly to get out, and here he is greeting me.  I pet him thinking, “I am not a dog person.  You are making a big mistake.”  He is gorgeous, tall, lean, with a shining brown coat of hard fur close to the skin.  I only recognize the poodle (Jane’s) and the golden retriever (Steve’s) so I don’t know who I am stroking as I check his collar.

Yes, there are all the shiny identity discs.  Which I can’t read because my glasses are in the car.  Holding his collar I stretch through the open window, but the glasses are out of reach. Before I can open the door, he presses against me in anticipation, and I remember Jane saying they bound into the car with very little coaxing.  I am reluctant to let him in.  I could drive him to the police station, but his eagerness makes me think he will sit on my lap. 

I am considering this as I see a car approaching and he starts a little dance getting ready to pursue that car too.  “No you don’t,” I say sternly, and hold his collar tightly until the car is gone.  I am automatically stroking him while pondering my next move when I see a figure flying across the lawn of a house down the block and running at us.  “Your dog?”  I call, stupidly.  Well, of course. 

She says, “Thanks,” and abruptly grabs the collar and pulls him back with her.

Gee, I thought, I rescued a dog.  I just had a Janey moment. 

---Florence

 

 

 

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Fancy Cooking

No surprise – I got two phone calls asking for Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child.  They each were disappointed to hear that a first edition published in 1961 is almost at $1000.  I don’t know how it was priced before the excitement of the movie, Julie & Julia. 

The movie was fun.  The minute Meryl Streep appears and speaks in Julia Child’s weird, high scratchy voice we all laughed and settled in for a good time.  Even non-cooks (my hand is raised here) have watched Julia on TV so we know Julia.  And there she was now, right in front of us.  The surprise for me was how joyful she appears in the movie, and since it is based on her autobiography, we have to believe her exuberance towards life.  

I was not exactly comfortable with her climbing into bed with her husband.  (And Stanley Tucci’s other movie roles didn’t prepare me for seeing him as such an affable husband, in or out of bed.)  All 6’2” of her looked much more at ease standing behind her counter madly chopping away at a growing mountain of onions.  Still, Julia had an interesting story to tell before she got to pick up a knife, and certainly after she’d conquered the use of it.

Being married to a foreign diplomat, Paul Child, brought her to Paris to live an elegant life which she delighted in until her empty days led her to the challenge of Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.  We watch her glee as she becomes accomplished at the cooking maneuvers. 

Fifty years later, although simultaneously in the movie, a darling Amy Adams decides her life needs a purpose and chooses to cook every one of the recipes outlined in Julia’s cook book, all 524 of them in the 365 days of the year.  That part of the movie astonished me.  She’s cooking more than one recipe a day?  Pounds of butter, huge masses of meat, lobsters (three of them), exotic ingredients.  Did I mention she’s a poor little thing living in the distant borough of Queens in an apartment over a Pizza place because she has a modest secretarial job at a government agency and even with her husband’s salary they have to live humbly?  When she dumped the food into the garbage because it didn’t cook up properly I cringed.  Back to the butcher and starting all over.  Where did the money come from?    We never saw the impecunious couple eat any of it either.  Can you imagine the leftovers? 

The gimmick is the blog Julie is writing as she chronicles her adventures in cooking  Julia’s French cuisine.  And incidentally, how disruptive it is to her marriage because of her passion, her frustration, her hours in the kitchen instead of at her husband’s side.  Her popular blog  becomes a  book.  (A review by Denise Vivaldo posted on The Huffington Post thought Julie in her book “came off as a whiny child, piggy-backing on Julia’s fame.”)  Never mind, she’s cute in the movie.

A great to-do was made over the Boeuf Bourguignon.  When we left the movie theater, I mused to Lauren, “In the days when I cooked, that was what I always made for company.  Boeuf  Bourguignon.”  I was feeling smug.  Lauren thought about it.   She said, “It was Beef  Stroganoff.  With sour cream.”  

Ooh la la, and poof, there goes my tiny romance with French cooking.  Chyort!  It was Russian!  Where’s my balalaika?

---Florence

 

A Book Buying Trip

A very nice thing happened. 

I had a lovely customer who read extensively, but collected primarily works of Robert Graves.  She didn’t like the search, and asked that I find all the books I could to satisfy her focus on poet, author, essayist Robert Graves.

This happened very early in the history of Titles, Inc.  Maybe 35 years ago?  I had started with a partner, Sonja Levinger.  A perfect match – I would dream Wouldn’t it be nice if we could…and Sonja would make it happen.  So Sonja and I would keep Robert Graves in mind when we visited other book stores.  This was of course before the easy access to books via the Internet.

We made a trip to NY (Wouldn’t it be nice if…and Sonja gets us to NY).  We had a great time buying books we knew we could sell in Chicago.

On our last day we found a little store front with a few shelves, and were told all the books were upstairs.  We climbed upstairs to an enormous loft with rows and rows and rows of bookshelves, overwhelming.

We introduced ourselves proudly as book dealers to a sour man whose attitude was So What.  I continue pleasantly, “How are your books laid out?”  “No pattern.”  I say, “For instance, where would we find poetry?”  “Anywhere.”  “Specifically, Robert Graves?”  “If I have it, you’ll have to find it.”  

Gone is my civility too.  “That’s not an answer to a customer!  I want to buy some books.  Help me out here!”  He answers, “So buy books.  See them?  Start buying.”  I respond in similar fashion, and Sonja skulks somewhere out of sight amongst the racks.  He and I are going at it New York style (I didn’t grow up in Brooklyn for nothing.) 

I turn indignantly and flounce over to the racks which do, indeed, shelve the books randomly.  I don’t find any Robert Graves, but I select some other interesting titles.  I find Sonja in one of the aisles with some books in her hands.  We decide there is too much boring stuff to find a jewel to our liking, and we return to the desk.

“What is your name?” I demand of the man.  He tells me.  Oh for Pete’s sake, that’s the name on the door.  I explode, “How can I report your arrogance to the man downstairs if you are the owner!”  He thinks that’s funny.  “The man downstairs is an employee.”  “He’s much nicer than you. Why are you so rude?” 

“I hate book dealers.”  This surprises me.  We love them as customers; they buy lots of books.  “Why do you hate book dealers?”

“Whenever they buy a book it means I’ve priced it too low.”  I think about that.  I tell him it never bothered us, we got what we thought it was worth.  I told him a joke we heard when we started in this book business:  If there was not another collector in the world, this business would still thrive as we continue to buy from each other for inventory.

He says, “Let me take you out for lunch tomorrow.”  What?  “I’d love it,” I answer honestly, “but we are leaving in the morning”.  We all shake hands.  I wish I could remember his name.

Oh, that was NOT the very nice thing I started to talk about.  I got distracted.  I’ll get back to the Very Nice Thing another time.

---Florence

 

 

 

Another Dog Rescue

I'd like to share this email that was sent from the somewhat secluded Hollywood hills of Los Angeles.

Hi, Mom,

Well once again I was driving along my nabe,  minding my own business and I spied a lost dog, this time a little llasa apso dog all alone, trotting along the road looking lost lost lost.

So once again I pulled over, got out and said: "Let's go HOME." If a dog lives close, he or she will lead me HOME and I can ring the bell and if the dog's person is there, typically the person is astounded, not having noticed the dog's absence.  (It would help if the dogs ever had tags w/their addresses, but they never do!). Otherwise, I phone.

My #2 rescue method if HOME doesn't work, is: "DOGGIE! Good dog! Let's go in the CAR!  Let's go HOME in the CAR!" Every dog I have ever said this to has hopped right in for a ride.

Then I look at the tag and call the person or if I can't call due to poor cell phone service in the hills, I take the dog to my house and call, as I did today.

Sometimes the dog is big and I leave him or her in my gated front yard, with a water bowl and kibble, while trying to find the parent(s).

This one was small so I brought him in the house to call the numbers on the tag. Jeep liked him!  Jeep let the lost dog play with a ball and drink Jeep's water.  I was astounded.

The dog had a cute "Pebbles" the Flintstone (or was the little girl Bam-Bam???) ponytail hairstyle on top of his head with a special little rubberband and was otherwise very elegantly groomed, so I wasn't worried about having to deal with a stray.

More I worried about if the people didn't answer the phone.  And I would then have to schlep to any vet for the computer chip ID scan deal, and if he didn't have a chip in his ear (Jeep does) linked to a central location to locate his people via his own vet, I would have to spend all weekend putting up "found dog" posters, etc. This consumed me for entire minutes till I was able to get a call through to his people.

See, I was worried as the 2 phone numbers on his tag weren't from around here. And not in American writing.  I have tried to take foreign dogs home and it is sometimes harder for all to understand where anyone lives in order to make the rescue -- depending who is home, and what generation.

Today's dog was area code 917 (Brooklyn???), but thank heavens they had call forwarding and answered the phone. 

So all worked out well.  The people were grateful and relieved -- I talked to 2 of them on the phone -- and I was SO relieved.  The dog's father came and the dog seemed VERY pleased to see his person.  But so did Jeep. Jeep jumped all over the lost/found dog's dad till he got hugged and petted.

It took quicker to do all that than to write this to you but I find this whole dog rescue thing quite stressful and I do not know why I spy these lost dogs every now and then.  There is a whole syndrome.  I see a lost dog.  It is happy and scampering along.  By the time I deal with the traffic and find a safe place to stop my car, the lost dog looks confused and goes back and forth.  I seem to find the ones who just got out!

I wish others would do this reuniting and not me!

But Jeep got out somehow a few times and he was returned to us before we knew he was missing, so I figure what comes around goes around!

Xxx Jane