Larry McMurtry’s ‘Books’ is chatty, fun

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By CHARLES STEPHEN / For the Lincoln Journal Star

(“Books: A Memoir” by Larry  McMurtry, Simon & Schuster, 259 pages, $24). Halfway through this wandering account of McMurtry’s bookish life he writes: “I nowadays have the feeling that not only are most bookmen eccentrics, but even the act they support — reading — is itself an eccentricity now, if a mild one.”

McMurtry, a prolific writer himself — with novels (“Lonesome Dove” won a Pulitzer) and screen plays (“Brokeback Mountain” won an Academy Award for him and his co-author) and biographies (“Crazy Horse”), and nearly 40 more — has spent much of the last 35 years running a series of used bookstores. One, called Booked Up, began in Washington, D.C., and now is in his hometown of Archer, Texas, and has, he estimates, 400,000 volumes.

In his nearby home he has 28,000 volumes in his private collection, which he calls “one of my most notable achievements.”

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This book, a memoir of his search for and sale of used books, will be dreadfully boring for some, but I loved it, even when I didn’t know most of the characters who wander in and out of his pages. The book is chatty and fun. He tells us of some of the unusual characters in the book trade and of some of the lucky book buys he has made (and some of those he almost made).

Unlike my own boyhood, which had plentiful books about, McMurtry writes of a bookless home when he was growing up. When his family moved into town from the ranch, the “Reader’s Digest” came and with it, the opportunity to get the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, which, he writes, “I hated on sight and still hate.” Bravo, I said aloud, and read on.

When a war-bound cousin gave him a box containing 19 books, that set his life’s direction.

Some readers of the book, which has 109 very brief chapters, will, upon finishing it, head out for a nearby used bookstore. He writes of a famous book scout named David Sachs, whose pant seats are usually dirty as he sits on the floor of used bookstores to see what is stored on the bottom shelves. Go thou and do likewise.

Charles Stephen is co-host of "All About Books," heard weekly on NET Radio.