AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Surplus Value Books: Catalog Number 13 by Rick Moody, David Ford ISBN: 0-9677410-4-1 Publisher: Danger Books Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $20.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Great things come in small packages
Comment: I used to think I was the only book collector who would pay a ridiculous sum for a book, put it on the bookshelf, and then go to the library to check out a copy of the same book for reading purposes. Rick Moody, in his hilarious take on rare book catalogues, assures me that I'm not. Moody's gentle humor will help serious book collectors to laugh at their obsessions while simultaneously comforting them with the knowledge that there are others who fear opening a book too widely lest they break the spine.

Although this book is set up as a dealer's catalogue, there is a running narrative that is warm, smart, and comical. Great book illustrations by David Ford to boot. This title should have great appeal to book collectors, but the irony is that since it had such a small printing, they'll have to read their own copies. Thankfully, Surplus Value Books can be read in one sitting so there will be no need to dog-ear pages.

Rating: 5
Summary: Hilarious, touching riff on rare book catalogs
Comment: Rick Moody is one of the most highly regarded young novelists in America today (the New Yorker included him in its list of the "20 best young American writers") and, as such, his first editions have come to have value in the collector's market. Moody has taken the principal vehicle for selling such first editions -- the modern rare book dealer's catalog -- and created what can only be called a novella in the form of a dealer's catalog -- a hilarious and touching self-contained world, where the values accorded to the items for sale (i.e., dollars) and the values inherent in them (i.e., their significance, artistry, passion) are continually surprising and challenging to the reader and range from the sublime to the ridiculous and all points in between. Moody has his tongue in cheek at all times, but wears his heart on his sleeve, too, and many of these items represent or embody a kind of sensitivity and tenderness that this reader found surprisingly touching in such an essentially comic take-off. Anyone who has ever enjoyed reading a rare book dealer's catalog will find this to be an extraordinary trip -- familiar, odd, even at times haunting. (I have to admit that I gave people reason to snicker by trying to order an item from it when I got my copy in the mail.)