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One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

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Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#51

Post by black_puppydog »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

I just helped clean up the estate of an uncle of mine that died. He'd collected an absolutely massive amount of books during his lifetime. Besides that he played the violin and had collected an equally impressive amount of music books. I managed to save some of the rare works but I could find absolutely no takers for the bulk of the books, at any price or even for free. That generation is leaving behind an enormous a…

Haha, yeah I've also given books away to one person, gotten a new copy, just to have the same book come up in a conversation with a different person and giving the new copy away. Rinse and repeat. :)

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#52

Post by petercooper »

ghaff wrote: post #48
petercooper wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right book at the right time can often be transformative opening up your mind to new ideas/possibilities and leading to better knowledge and wisdom. I agree. I'm a bit of a used book shop dweller and collector of oddities myself and I'm often struck with this sort of inspired feeling after reading the most random old thing that might otherwise have ended up being recycled. There's so much human experience packed…

There used to be a great used book store in Harvard Square but I suspect they sort of overextended (opened second location) at the wrong time though don't really know the story. There's another basically hybrid store--used books are in the basement--but I have to admit I haven't been in there for a while. That area used to be a cornucopia of book stores generally but that's mostly gone.

I think they're a little more common where I live in the UK, at least. I actually thought the original post was going to be about https://www.the-bookshop.com/ in Scotland where I've visited a few times, but they have 100,000 books versus this guy's 150k :)

I don't know if the US has the concept of "book towns" but there's quite a few over Europe where you'll have used book stores very close to each other and some sort of annual book festival. Wigtown in Scotland is absolutely tiny (under a thousand people and far from any major towns) but has several, as does Hay-on-Wye in Wales. It becomes a bit of a tourist thing.

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#53

Post by exe34 »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #21
lotsoweiners wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was different about transfer via usb vs “send to Kindle” ? I’ve always used the latter.

Probably the requirement to be online.

yeah and also I ran dedrm before putting anything on the Kindle.

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#54

Post by contingencies »

mister_mort wrote: post #42
contingencies wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Australia one of the charities runs huge book fairs every few months where vast amounts of literature are loosely organized in to subject sections. It's all volunteer labor and I believe the proceeds go to homeless people and victims of domestic violence. I have acquired some awesome old maps this way as well as rare and interesting works. Unless aggressively digitized, most of the data will become unobtainiu…

I'm curious about this - do you have the name of the charity in question?

https://www.lifelineh2hsydney.org.au/love-books/2025-book-fa... Lifeline: turns out it's suicide prevention focused. https://www.lifeline.org.au/ Not sure why they have two websites.

A recent event raised $300K: https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2025/09/02/31...

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#55

Post by ninalanyon »

pjc50 wrote: post #35
pavlov wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for your loss. It's sad that his collection didn't get the full attention it deserved. > "the housing company only gave us two weeks to vacate the place" It's a very good idea for a collector to own a place to keep the stuff. The British book collection mentioned in the article is housed in a former youth hostel in the countryside. That kind of place can be surprisingly affordable to buy... But of course it's t…

> It's a very good idea for a collector to own a place to keep the stuff. Perhaps, but even for valuable things like musical instruments the floor space ends up being far more valuable than the objects. Hence the relentless march of waste disposal. It's very sad but a core fact of modern life that land is money. (the phrase "housing company" implies that the collector did not even own a house for himself, let alone t…

> It's very sad but a core fact of modern life that land is money.

It always has been. And it's an ongoing scandal that it is not taxed.

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#56

Post by ghaff »

petercooper wrote: post #52
ghaff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a great used book store in Harvard Square but I suspect they sort of overextended (opened second location) at the wrong time though don't really know the story. There's another basically hybrid store--used books are in the basement--but I have to admit I haven't been in there for a while. That area used to be a cornucopia of book stores generally but that's mostly gone.

I think they're a little more common where I live in the UK, at least. I actually thought the original post was going to be about https://www.the-bookshop.com/ in Scotland where I've visited a few times, but they have 100,000 books versus this guy's 150k :) I don't know if the US has the concept of "book towns" but there's quite a few over Europe where you'll have used book stores very close to each other and some so…

I don't think so. As I said, Harvard Square used to have a pretty high density of book and music stores. Not really so much any longer and I've never seen the equivalent elsewhere. Of course, Manhattan has a lot but, given the population density, I'm not sure I'd call it a book town.

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#57

Post by araes »

Took forever, yet eventually found the place. Surprising lack of addresses for having stories in the Yorkshire Post and the BBC. Nobody actually linked to the address or a sale listing. Old Youth Hostel, Aysgarth, North Yorkshire. Corner of A684 and Church Bank. Shows up as the "Palmer Flatt Hotel, Leyburn DL8 3SR, UK" on Google Maps. Closest major city is Leeds at 1h 30m drive. Middlesbrough is maybe 1h 10m. Manchester is maybe 2h. Lots of very obvious books on every floor through the windows.

Notably, this is literally almost in the exact center of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. This about as far away from "anything" as you can even get in the United Kingdom.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/A684,+United+Kingdom/@54.2...

Echo the sentiment that 10 GBP/book, perpetual storage, sounds good, with the caveat that its in the middle of nowhere.

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#58

Post by fancyfredbot »

pjc50 wrote: post #36
fancyfredbot wrote: post #12

Being a collector is an affliction. A huge house given over to his collection while he relegates himself to the groundskeepers cottage. A lifetime acquiring money to grow the collection. I hope selling it gives him some peace.

It's like having a family: on paper, they take up space in your house and cost you money.

While you have correctly identified that a family and a book collection share some attributes I think you may have missed an important difference. The books won't love you back.

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#59

Post by rramadass »

petercooper wrote: post #43
rramadass wrote: post #26

Man, this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I just love books, have a large collection of my own (though obviously not on the scale of the article) and am always on the lookout for offbeat books (old/new/whatever) on any subjects that i find interesting. With Internet Archives/Project Gutenberg/etc. you can of course have your ebook versions but there is nothing like having a hard copy in hand. The right book at the…

The right book at the right time can often be transformative opening up your mind to new ideas/possibilities and leading to better knowledge and wisdom. I agree. I'm a bit of a used book shop dweller and collector of oddities myself and I'm often struck with this sort of inspired feeling after reading the most random old thing that might otherwise have ended up being recycled. There's so much human experience packed…

People have forgotten that it was the invention of the printing press which made books widely available to the masses, which then became the main catalyst for the Scientific Revolution (by diffusing the knowledge/discoveries/inventions of an individual/small group across the entire population) leading to the advanced Technology based society we live in today.

We have become so complacent that anti-intellectualism has become the norm in popular culture and people see no benefit in learning "knowledge for knowledge's sake". The irony is that in today's world there are myriad avenues for knowledge acquisition and far more easily and cheaply than ever before. Because there is so much to learn the minimum that people should focus on is to get exposed to different types of knowledge i.e. breadth over depth. And both Non-Fiction and Fiction are needed here, the former to deal with Reality and the latter for modulating The Human Condition all with the aim of a well-rounded life.

Re: One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

#60

Post by WTFnsfw »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

I just helped clean up the estate of an uncle of mine that died. He'd collected an absolutely massive amount of books during his lifetime. Besides that he played the violin and had collected an equally impressive amount of music books. I managed to save some of the rare works but I could find absolutely no takers for the bulk of the books, at any price or even for free. That generation is leaving behind an enormous a…

"I could find absolutely no takers for the bulk of the books" : archive.org ...
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