Online booksellers have every opportunity to show potential buyers their wares with informative photographs. No one should ever again need to consider the purchase of a book possessing some unique feature sight unseen. And yet, I keep returning to the theme of books offered in my area of interest with tantalizing written descriptions but no images to provide corroboration. Perhaps it's a question of expense to the book dealer, or of time, or of both. An occasional seller might be trying to conceal an unfortunate detail or even to deceive outright, but for the most part my experiments in buying books blindly—that is, sight unseen—have turned out pretty well.
Sometimes it's a no brainer. When the chance to buy a copy of James Stevenson's The Life, Loves & Laughs of Frank Modell (2013) turned up, I thought it would be a great opportunity to add this privately published book to my library. Frank Modell (1917–2016), of course, was the prolific New Yorker cartoonist with more than 1400 cartoons to his credit in the magazine. He and Stevenson were great friends. Furthermore, the book was said to be signed and inscribed by the author, so I figured it was my lucky day. And with a price of only $14.96 postpaid, it didn't really concern me that the seller couldn't be troubled to post any photos.
 |
| James Stevenson AbeBooks listing accessed December 24, 2022 |
That's okay—I know how to take photos. Here then is the book, everything one could hope to buy with $14.96 in these inflationary times:
It's a good-looking book, by the way.
04213
No comments:
Post a Comment