Looking After Your Books
Francesca Galligan’s Looking After Your Books is a delightful reference volume for book lovers.
A librarian at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, Galligan is an ideal dispenser of book-related advice. She balances her expertise with conversational prose and a firm eye toward affordability for individual collectors. The emotional components of book collecting are honored, too, with notes about the idiosyncratic character of a passion that leads one collector to look for velvet bindings, and another to hunt down every volume housed in the personal libraries of their favorite authors.
Addressing all stages of book ownership, including starting a collection, caring for books, and getting rid of books, should that time come, this book is rich with historical anecdotes. For instance, it considers Henry VIII’s marginalia, in which he noted that the commandment against coveting another’s wife should only apply when done “wrongly or unjustly.” It is also replete with practical pointers, as with its instructions for spotting a first edition or drying out a book that’s gotten wet. A recipe for homemade glue for those in need of structural repairs also appears.
Looking After Your Books is a compact pleasure of a how-to book for bibliophiles.Though it is a slim volume, the book is rife with useful references, covering topics as diverse as online bibliographies for finding an as-yet undiscovered addition to a collection to calligraphers who accept commissions for personalized versions of beloved texts.
Reviewed by
Carolyn Wilson-Scott
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
