Bartlett, Allison Hoover: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

Riverhead Books © 2009, 288 pages

Note: Review copy received from publisher. Amazon affiliate: Links pointing to Amazon contain my affiliate ID. Sales resulting from clicks on those links will earn me a percentage of the purchase price.

Allison Hoover Bartlett's The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is a quick, readable look at the world of book collection. She dips into the history of bibliomania and provides vignettes of other characters, but mostly the book is an account of two men and the author's experiences in getting to know them. Ken Sanders is the owner of a rare book store in Salt Lake City who served for six years as the security chair of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association. He embraced that role enthusiastically, improved methods for alerting members of the organization to recent thefts during his tenure, and doggedly pursued one particular repeat offender. John Charles Gilkey, like other bibliomaniacs, is obsessed with adding to his collection of rare books, but in his case the books have tended to come free of charge, courtesy of the sorry souls who were unlucky enough to have once handed over their credit cards to Gilkey when he worked at Saks Fifth Avenue. Gilkey methodically collected their numbers and identities and used the cards, months later, to fund hotel stays and book-buying junkets.

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