The Booksellers

The rare book world to some seems like an impenetrable mystery filled with expensive volumes, well-heeled buyers, and unapproachable and quixotic sellers brimming with disdain for the uninitiated. In fact, it is a very vibrant and welcoming world with a fabulous range of interesting material, many affordable rarities to delight, and down-to-earth dealers that are thrilled with new collectors whose interest they can cultivate. As such, this is a rare and important movie for it opens up that unique world to a broader audience. If you are curious about this movie, your soul already gravitates towards literature and history, but you may not know how easy it is to hold treasures in one's hand and connect on such an intimate level with great authors and events of the past. The movie is a tribute not only to the love affair of the printed word, but to the people who seek it out, catalog it, contextualize it, and make it available to libraries and collectors. The movie also deserves great credit for highlighting women and minorities (among others) and the importance of the growing inclusiveness in the rare book world in terms of collecting and preserving their narratives and helping assemble the first hand material that will help tell many untold stories.

A glimpse into the world of book collectors with perspective from different collectors. Jumps around a bit too much from collector to collector instead of focusing on the history of book collecting and staying on point to tell a story. Comes across a bit dull at times in story telling and it seems like there are some missed opportunities to dive into each collectors unique personality. The documentary is at its strongest when talking about where the hobby has been and where it is headed.

I chanced upon this documentary on Amazon Prime. Because I have quite a large collection of books and have spent much of my life haunting used bookstores, I was intrigued. It was fun to see the passion for the items themselves. All collectors have a bit of an unhealthy connection to whatever they are collecting. But why is the question that is most important. Here we see people who have connections going back generations or those who are contemporary. I enjoyed it, but I have to say that at times it really dragged. Sometimes people can be too philosophical. Still, many questions that have evaded me were answered reasonably well.

Beautifully shot, a lively jazz soundtrack and some interesting characters and good interviews.

Fran Lebowitz for me was the standout, and I could listen to her all day.

For me where it falls down is that it has no form of a narrative. A good story has a beginning middle and end. It takes you on an emotional journey. This felt more like a clip show.

Topics are brought up throughout, giving a feeling of a repetition rather than a story being crafted.

Maybe I should embrace the eclectic story, to match the eclectic people. But for me it felt like it needed a message of some sort to sew this all together.

The Booksellers (2019) -

This documentary was that sort of crass that you get from America sometimes, full of some very eccentric people, not all from the U. S. However the content still had an appeal about it by the time I made it to the end.

Some of the "Booksellers" looked incredibly familiar, but I couldn't for the life of me work out where I might have known them from, because I've never seen anything else about these people, which lead me to wonder if they might be actors, although IMDB did not back up that theory of course. Perhaps they just have those faces.

The film itself made me wish that the charming old book shops, that so many of the people described, still existed. I remembered the second hand book shop that I used to frequent, which was never going to really succeed, because the guy that owned and ran it spent all day reading instead of stacking or shelving the books in to any sort of orderly system, but it was a place to find treasures and I pray that places like it (Maybe slightly better) might come back in to fashion again.

What I liked about this documentary was that it covered diversity within writing, without screaming about it too much. There were references to authors of colour and of course those within the LGBTQ+ community, because books were a large part of bringing acceptance about and another way to access information on other cultures through stories and so on.

What worried me by the end though was the question of what happens if the internet crashes and all is lost? I don't care how many back ups the world thinks it has, we must keep books alive. Even if they're all just kept in a damp proof and fireproof building to be referred to at special request, because knowledge is so important and so is the art of writing fiction or otherwise. You wouldn't scan Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' in to a computer and then consider it less important to keep the originals, because it's saved forever in the electric ether!

As a writer, I feel that the internet and access to the written word that way is very important, but I will always put my books out as hard copies, because I believe that there is still something important about having that book to hold and treasure if you do find that you enjoy it. You never know when Netflix will take your favourite show off of their listings and you never know when Kindle might decide that a book isn't worth keeping anymore either. If you have a real copy then you can never be without your favourite adventures or pages of knowledge.

So, overall it was interesting to see how these people worked within the industry, although for some of them it was more about the possession of a book with monetary value and less about the beauty of the words or pictures inside, but in general this film just stirred feelings within me around the creation, publication and continuation of the printed word.

600.17/1000.