On Collecting

Style reveals the man. The building of a library is an act of style, an expression of what we are and a good measure of who we are. Collecting is an act of self-realization. One collects books and builds a library to create an intensified environment. It is a philosophical statement as this room is […]

From the Library of Albert Murray

Albert Murray

That shelf is where my real stuff is. See it start with Joyce and come up to Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. That’s it. That’s the contemporary literature I read. Those people in those books up there on the shelves provide a solid base to enable us to get to it all. There’s Mann’s Joseph and […]

On Bibliophiles

Reading, the unpunished vice, promises, as most vices do, a finer world within the world. Beyond the narrow realm of our senses is the greater reality retained in and contained by that cumbersome and collectable commodity, the book. While all book collectors consider themselves bibliophiles, most bibliophiles perceive collecting as the precious sport of a […]