Did you know that in addition to the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, there is also a Rare Book School at UCLA? They recently announced their courses for summer 2008, and you can read all about it below. Note the part about field trips!
The California Rare Book School (CALRBS) is pleased to announce its schedule of classes for Summer 2008. Most courses will be held on the campus of UCLA. Several courses will include field trips to the many important collections housed in Southern California.
Week 1 (August 4-10)
Special Collections Librarianship: Operations & Administration;
faculty: Lynda Claassen, University of California San Diego; David Zeidberg, Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens
Descriptive Bibliography; faculty: Carl Berkhout, University of Arizona
History of the Book in Hispanic America, 16th-19th Centuries;
faculty: Daniel J. Slive, University of California San Diego; David Szewczyk, The Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company
Donors and Libaries;
faculty: Susan M. Allen, Getty Research Institute; William Barlow, Barlow & Hughan.
Week 2 (August 11-15)
Book Collecting: History and Techniques;
faculty: Bruce Whiteman, The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
Book Illustration Processes to 1900;
faculty: Terry Belanger, Rare Book School, University of Virginia
Books of the Far West, with an Emphasis on California;
faculty: Gary F. Kurutz, California State Library
Preservation Stewardship of Library Collections;
faculty: Mark S. Roosa, Pepperdine University
For detailed course descriptions, bios of our faculty, applications and more go to www.calrbs.org.
From the title of this post, you might think that I’m going to write about the care and keeping of your fine books. Alas, that is not to be today. There have been a few distractions besides housekeeping that have delayed my book cataloguing — poor Dante! He continues to languish on the shelves, wondering when he’ll get to be properly catalogued and go live with someone who truly appreciates him.
First, I’m planning for February’s book fair and now I have to plan for taxes. Today (and probably for several days to come), I’m trying to get the business end of my book business organized. Why now? Because it’s almost the end of the year and I hate to do things last minute. Before he retired, my Dad used to be accountant. He and Thoughtful Husband keep reminding me that soon it will be tax time and have I got all of my business records organized? Since it’s my first year in business, this will be the first time I’ve filed a sales tax return and done taxes for the business. I want to make sure I do it correctly. You might think that I’d be familiar with this, but as a teacher I only had to file income tax returns. I’ve never done business taxes and I am (as usual) a bit intimidated. Also, I admit that a part of me really does not want to know whether this first year has been a profit or a loss. I’m the type that loves bookselling so much that I will want to keep at it regardless of whether it’s costing me (and poor old Thoughtful Husband), though from a business standpoint that would a bad decision. Lucky for me, I don’t make many of my decisions from a business standpoint.
Does your bookselling database (mine is BookHound) run sales tax reports for you? I didn’t know if mine did, and I was worried I’d have to go back through each individual invoice and write down the taxes for taxable sales. I hadn’t taken this into consideration when I purchased a bookselling database program, but if you’re about to purchase one, you should. I was blinded by BookHound’s easy to use cataloguing program, customer records, and invoices. Unbelievably, I never thought to ask about taxes. “Sure, honey, I’m sure BookHound has something for sales tax reports,” I said nervously to Thoughtful Husband. I was not at all sure. Fortunately, I discovered this morning that when you click on a tab called “Reports” (a tab I had ignored all year) it has all kinds of reports, including sales taxes! Yippee! Thanks, BookHound. I promise to read the user manual because I now realize there are all sorts of helpful reports I’ve been ignoring. That means there are probably all sorts of other useful bookish aspects of BookHound of which I’m not at all aware.
Luddite that I am, I have been keeping a ledger book with pencil to record my other expenses. Thoughtful Husband, who is also smart and tech savvy, smirks when I say that. He said, “I’ll mention it to the accountant and see what he says.” (I should mention that Thoughtful Husband also owns his own small business and has an established relationship with an accountant. With all of this small-business-owning and a wife who uses an old-fashioned ledger book, you need an expert to help figure out your income taxes.) The accountant said I should get Quicken or QuickBooks and transfer all of my accounting to computer ASAP. As I hate numbers and only respectfully tolerate computers, I cannot imagine a more boring way to spend my time, yet I know this investment of time will ultimately help me refine my costs of doing business. So, it’s off to check out Quicken and Quickbooks, and then (gulp) transfer an entire year’s worth of pencilled-in ledger book into the computer.
I know what this struggle with accounting is. Dante has put me into one of his circles of Hell for failing to complete his catalogue in a timely manner. Accounting is my punishment.
Has this ever happened to you? I hear about a book I’ve never heard of before. The title intrigues me, and I immediately buy a first edition of the book in dustjacket (at a reasonable price) from another bookseller. About a month later, I find the same book, also in dustjacket in similar condition, at a library sale for $3.00, much less than even the reasonable price I paid another dealer. I buy it, too, and now I have two copies. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t fault the other bookseller for charging a higher price. He sold a book for what he was asking and I paid the price because I wanted it right now! You do know that a book is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, don’t you? I call the extra money I spent on the first book “bookseller’s tuition” — this experience taught me the lesson that I have got to remind myself to be patient when looking for a book, particularly a book that is not all that uncommon.
I’m sure by now you’re wondering what is the book in question. It was the unusual title that grabbed me and made me think, “I simply have to buy this!” Here it is:
The author lived in Burlingame, a town near mine, for a time. She was the model for Charles Dana Gibson’s iconic “Gibson Girl”, an example of style and elegance. After a short marriage ended, she set out with a friend to paint portraits of the native headhunters of the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. In addition to painting the portraits of the headhunters, she experienced, “fever, Shanghai feet, moldy clothes, fire, and earthquake.” Her portraits recorded a culture that was rapidly eroding due to colonization. After Mytinger returned, in 1930, the American Museum of Natural History in New York did an exhibition of her paintings with the guidance of anthropologist Margaret Mead. A recent expedition even recreated Mytinger’s journey. You can read more about that here.
You know how much I like pioneer women. Mytinger didn’t cross the plains in a covered wagon; she didn’t run a bordello on the Barbary Coast; she didn’t fight nature to establish a homestead, yet she was very much a pioneer. You can see why I had to have this book. In fact, now that I think about it, I am happy to own two copies.
I’ll be exhibiting and selling books at a book fair for the second time in February:
This show is larger than the one I did in Sacramento in September. Their website currently lists 166 exhibitors. The fair is also one week before the Los Angeles ABAA book fair, so I hope for a good turnout with lots of buying activity. (Yes, I am always this optimistic. I don’t know any better.) I’m trying to think ahead about what will attract visitors to stop and look at my books. The venue in Sacramento was small, so book fair customers had time to walk by and look at all booths. By contrast, the San Francisco fair venue is quite large and spread out. Unless a person plans to spend all day there, he won’t get to every booth. He’ll have to pick and choose the booths in which he stops and browses. I need to make certain my booth makes a customer want to stop and browse.
You may have read my earlier posts on planning booth layout before September’s fair here and here. You might have thought, “Well, it’s her first book fair. It’s natural for her to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to display her books.” Now it’s my second book fair, and I’m doing it again — obsessing over booth layout and book display, that is. This time, my obsession is being encouraged by the show organizer. Look what I got in the mail over the weekend:
I can cut out the little scale models of booth equipment and lay them on the grid and experiment with different layouts! I haven’t had this much fun since I played with paper dolls as a kid. All sorts of interesting set-ups are possible. I can’t wait to cut these out and go over them with my booth-mate and fellow Colorado Seminar classmate, Jeanne Jarzombek of The Book Prowler.
The show organizer even sent a sketch of the actual walls of the booth and a complete list of everything inside:
This is going to be fun! I can’t wait until I get to choose which books will be displayed face out and which will be displayed spine out. Mostly, I can’t wait until I can hand-sell some more books and visit with other booksellers and book lovers.
Mark your calendar for February 9 and 10 if you live near or are visiting San Francisco. I’ll see you at the book fair!
Thanksgiving is over, but the feelings of gratitude linger. We drove to California’s central valley to visit Thoughtful Husband’s sister and her family for the holiday. It takes almost five hours to get there, and we had a caravan this year — two cars — one driven by me, and one by Thoughtful Husband. We took our sons, Tom and Huck, and our dog, Molly. We also took my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law’s father, aunt and uncle. These last four people are in their 80s and can’t do the long drive themselves anymore. Since they all live near us, Thoughtful Husband and I offered to drive them to the celebration.
My sister-in-law and her family live in a farming community. There are a lot of homes there, but one can own a home — with land –inexpensively, especially when one’s view is in the context of crowded and extravagant Bay Area standards. Here’s a picture of the scenery, taken from the car window on the main highway:
I love to visit here for Thanksgiving. The trees turn colors, farm animals dot the landscape, and it is truly Keats’ “season of mists and yellow frutifulness” in the autumn. It’s a long drive to get there, but when I arrive, I am in Thanksgiving-land, far from the traffic and multitudes of the Bay Area.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, cooked up by my sister-in-law and her husband. Things are pretty traditional in our family — turkey, sweet potatoes, fresh bread, salad, green beans, and pumpkin pie — but there’s one additional twist. My husand’s family is of Italian descent, and we always have raviolis with homemade “gravy” with our dinner. (I’m not Italian, so I call the gravy “sauce” — heresy. Lucky for me, I am still allowed to dine with the rest of the family.) Try as I might, I am genetically incapable of creating such a delectable treat, so I look forward to those delicious dumplings with all of their tomato-basil flavoring almost more than I look forward to the turkey. It was a meal to be thankful for indeed.
My brother-in-law surprised us Friday night by taking the entire family to a concert to kick off the Christmas season. The group that performed is called Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I might as well live under a rock when it comes to pop culture, because I had never heard of them. Well, this concert was unlike anything I ever saw. As my nephew says, “Think Spinal Tap meets Beethoven.” Familiar Christmas songs and classical music are all reset to the sounds of heavy metal rock guitars (four), electric violin (one), keyboards (two), a string section (about eight musicians), back-up singers (about six), and a huge drum kit.
The show itself must be seen to be believed. It involves backlit guitar gods rising from the stage on hydraulic platforms in a shroud of fog, their long, heavy-metal-hair blown to its full glory by wind machines, plumes of colored flame shooting into the air behind them. There’s a drummer who juggles his drumsticks in between beats. There are laser lights (think Pink Floyd), flames, pyrotechnics, and, yes, even snow. There’s even a narrator. There’s also Beethoven, Liszt, and Pachelbel. “Rock opera” is the only term I can use to describe this theatrical presentation. Words really can’t do it justice. If you are so inclined (and I realize you may not be), click on the photo below to see a video of a Trans-Siberian Orchestra performance. It’s really very different from any Christmas performance I’ve ever seen. If you’re a guitar afficionado, be sure to watch the last two minutes of the song. If you’re in a hurry, skip the first three minutes of narration and just listen to the song.
Still with me? Tom and Huck were transfixed by the spectacle of the concert and have decided that in addition to becoming scientists and professional skateboarders, they want to be rock stars. Looks like I have my parenting work cut out for me. The octogenarians in the family declared, “I’ve never seen anything like it!” and “It was so loud.” Me? I’m left wondering how a bookseller could borrow some of the showmanship of Trans-Siberian Orchestra and use it at a book fair. Perhaps I could be raised above my booth on a hydraulic platform with dramatic amounts of fog swirling at my feet, wind machines gently turning the pages of an ancient and rare tome while heavy metal guitar riffs punctuate every phrase of my poetic description?
Tomorrow, it’s back to the books, the laundry, and the groceries. Today, I am thankful to have family with whom to celebrate Thanksgiving and who I can always count on to show me something new and different!
(Please forgive any typos/grammar errors. It’s late and I didn’t have the energy to proofread.)
With Thanksgiving coming tomorrow, I’ve been thinking about all of the book-related things for which I am grateful. Most of these have occurred in the last twelve months.
1) That I took the chance and wrote a letter to the Bibliophile Group email list, asking how to become a bookseller. I got quite a few responses, and have always been thankful that other booksellers were willing to share their experiences (both good and bad) with me.
2) That, because of that letter, I met a mentor who is willing to spend a good deal of time helping me to learn the trade, who has helped me to learn from my mistakes, and who has cheered me on when I’ve done well.
4) That I got to work at the ABAA book fair in San Francisco last February. What an amazing experience and what an amazing assortment of books gathered under one roof.
8 ) That I started this blog — without necessarily intending to, I’ve made connections with other booksellers, book collectors, and book lovers. For that, I am exceedingly grateful.
Thanks for reading, especially if you’re reading just for your own amusement and aren’t my husband or parents, who are kind of obligated to read.
9) That I had enough good book finds and enough sales to make me believe I can sustain, and, I hope, grow, this business.
Of course, I am most thankful for my family, my health, and my home. I just wanted to focus on the book business here. I’ve got a lot of things going on for Thanksgiving weekend, so I’m going to take a break until Monday and enjoy my time with my family.
I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving filled with whatever makes you feel grateful.
How could I resist the title or the pretty binding? (And the good price?) All I need to do on a bad day is look at a book like this and I feel better.
The book of poems, written by Thomas Campbell and illustsrated by Birket Foster, George Thomas, and Harrison Weir, was originally published in 1799. This is an 1855 edition published in London by Sampson Low & Son. My copy is not the first edition, but I love that title and that shiny front cover so much I just didn’t really care when I bought it. Book-love at first sight can make me do crazy things like that.
When I received the book, I examined the binding up close and saw that the leather cover had first been blindstamped and then the title had been re-stamped (on top of the blindstamping) with gilt. When I looked even more closely, I saw that, on the front cover, the title had been blindstamped upside down, but stamped in gilt with right side up. Look below and see if you see can see it:
If you look between the “by” and “Thomas Campbell”, especially near the “l” in “Campbell”, you can just make out where the “P” in Pleasures is blind stamped upside down. I presume that this is a binding error, but I don’t know for sure. I’m not sure what to call it when I write the description for this book. Time to check out some other resources, starting with John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors and Geoffrey Ashall Glaister’s Encyclopedia of the Book. I’ll let you know what I find out. If you know of a specific bookish term to describe such a strange binding trait, please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks!
I’m back, even though it’s not yet Monday and I am still coughing and coughing. I wanted to do just one more post about fingerspitzengefuhl (if you can stand it), and I’ve got it written, so I’m just going to post it a little bit ahead of schedule. Thank you again to readers who shared their stories of good book finds last week.
Late last week I received an email comment from Scott Brown, Editor of Fine Books and Collections, in which he said that while a good book find is a good book find, fingerspitzengefuhl often adds to the value of that find. An antiquarian bookseller researches the book, decides what it is worth, and then convinces her buyer of that fact. To some, this might seem obvious, but the internet has allowed some booksellers to feel they can bypass that research part. Many booksellers find a book they think is good, purchase it for, say $1, then go home and look up the price of the same title on Amazon, ABE, or Ebay. To them, fingerspitzengefuhl is finding a book for $1 and finding out that it sells on Amazon for $50. They then list the book at $50. That’s ok, but they could be selling themselves short.
Sometimes — and this is what I really enjoy about bookselling — further research allows an antiquarian bookseller to determine that a book is worth more than what other booksellers online are asking for it. The challenge here is finding the information that others offering the same book don’t have and then convincing your customers that it’s worth it. Here’s what Mr. Brown had to say:
Hello Chris,
I’ve enjoyed reading the tales of fingerspitzengefuhl on your blog. Good finds are tremendous fun to make and even more fun to recount. The examples of fingerspitzengefuhl given on Book Hunter’s Holiday, however, may miss the point Rostenberg and Stern were making about their fingertip feeling for books. There is a certain amount of scorn expressed for people who use scanners to check book values, yet those same people suggest that good fingerspitzengefuhl is buying a book for a dollar and then finding out that it’s going for $50 online. If you are
going to determine values by the prices on the book search websites, why not use a scanner? Buying for $1 without a scanner and selling on Amazon or eBay for $50 is simply getting lucky, sort of like winning the lottery. It’s fun, but it is not what R and S meant by fingerspitzengefuhl. R and S got a feeling in their fingertips, determined that an obscure pamphlet was central to understanding some historical event, decided it was worth $250, and then sold it for that amount. They weren’t in the habit of asking other people how much a book should be worth. They decided how much it was worth.
Most people who call themselves booksellers today are really book listers: Enter a book in a database and then list it online. Bookselling, as practiced by R and S and most other successful dealers, is about finding the right customer for the right book and then convincing her that she can’t live without it. It’s not about waiting for someone to hit Buy It Now. The way to tell if you’re a book lister is to imagine that the Internet disappeared. Could you still sell books? If not, you’re a lister. Booksellers have networks of customers they sell to again and again. The Internet facilitates that, but in the end, it’s just another tool for a bookseller, much like the phone, the fax machine, or the post office. For book listers, the Internet is everything.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a book lister. I buy books from them all the time and as a group they offer a tremendous service to people looking for specific used books. But if you’re going to be in the book listing business, by all means get a handheld device and buy books using every tool available to you. It’s guaranteed to improve your odds in the book hunting lottery.
PO Box 106
Eureka, CA 95502
tel. 707.443.9562
fax. 707.443.9572
When I use Mr. Brown’s criteria, I consider myself a bookseller (as opposed to a book lister). I sell at book fairs, I (plan to) do print catalogues, and I currently only offer books for sale only on my own website. For what it’s worth, I don’t use a handheld scanner at book sales because most of the books I purchase are pre-ISBN and, for me, the fun of buying cheaply at a library sale is not knowing for certain when I purchase a book whether it will turn out to be significant or valuable. This way, I learn to hone my instincts and I also learn better from my mistakes. Does my failure to use a scanning device mean I’ve missed books along the way or made purchasing mistakes? Sometimes, probably. More often than not, I do just fine selecting books for resale without it, and my method works for my current business and financial needs. I wouldn’t rule out using such a device, but haven’t found that it works for my current needs. I also buy a lot of books from the type of sellers that Mr. Brown calls book listers. There are a lot of types of books and the necessity for a lot of types of sellers. The key is figuring out which type you’d like to be — book lister or bookseller — and taking steps to get there.
You saw here that my willingness to go an extra mile in research led to my discovering that the book I found was much more uncommon than I had previously thought. Had I not gone that extra mile, I would simply have used this nice book as shelf decoration (it’s pretty) and then sold it at a much lower price. To recap an earlier post:
The ability to determine whether a book is a good one or not is probably best summed up by two spectacular veteran booksellers, now deceased — Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern. In their memoir, Old Books, Rare Friends, they write:
“As far as we know, the word Finger-Spitzengefuhl never made it to a dictionary. It was originally Herbert Reichner [another bookseller to whom Rostenberg was an apprentice] who passed it on to us. A tingling of the fingertips becomes an electrical current of suspense, excitement, recognition. In an artificially controlled voice, one of us calls to the other, ‘Look! This may be something.’ And two heads look down upon the title page of a discovery. Sometimes the Finger-Spitzengefuhl occurs on the spot as we scan the shelves of a foreign dealer. Sometimes it takes place only after the purchase has been made and we study our finds. Whenever or wherever it occurs, it is an experience that makes the rare book business a hymn to joy.”
Thanks to Scott Brown for making me stop and think more carefully about the meaning of fingerspitzengefuhl and whether I want to be a book lister or a bookseller. I hope his comments do the same for you, too.
Like the cowgirl in the postcard picture below, I’m on the lookout — for a cure, that is.
I’ve come down with a nasty cold. Congested, stuffy nose, hacking cough, sore throat. It prompted me to take out this little gem, which I found at the book fair in Sacramento in September:
In addition to household recipes, this 1876 edition has cures for “the hacking cough of consumption” (”bronchial troches”?), “worms in children” (Brown’s Vermifuge Comfits), and other pestilence like small-pox (yeast three times a day and milk - “nearly every case cured without a pock mark”), and “bed-bug poison” (an ounce of quicksilver mixed with two egg whites, in case you ever need to know, and I hope you don’t).
Now, I’m off to rest-up with a hot cup of Earl Grey. The book says, “A cough, cold, or sore throat requires immediate attention, as neglect oftentimes results in some incurable lung disease.” I’m a hardy sort. I’ll be back with a new post on Monday.
Thanks to those who shared their tales of good book finds. Since I enjoy hearing tales of good finds and I think I you will, too, I am posting a few of the stories of good finds here. There are lessons to be culled from these stories, from buying a good book on a hunch to selling a good book find at a lower price than you should have to the longing to become an antiquarian bookseller . Enjoy the stories and learn something as well, and thanks again to those who contributed!
The estate sale was in an old part of town where I always loved exploring. The estate belonged to someone who never threw anything out. Treasures abounded! Except books. I bought some cheap fountain pens, enjoyed strange contraptions, flipped through vintage photos. I was a bit disappointed there was not much paper, and only self-help type books. I wondered if all the paper was thrown out before the sale, or a bookdealer already clean out all the good books? I did grab one WWII vintage Army manual. Nothing special, but we didn’t have this one at the WWII museum I was working at, at the time.
There were a couple sheds outside with people browsing through, though. I went outside, the first shed was exactly that. A garden shed full of gardening things. And bugs, which I suppose could be called garden things. The second ws quite different. It had mounds of paper heaped on the ground. Fortunately, this was in west Texas, and it was’t very damp inside. I sifted through the paper. Not much of interest. Mostly stuff from the mid-1970s forward. Medical related, bank statements, cancelled checks. Then there were a couple of staplebound booklets. These looked older. They said “Watchtower” across the covers. Well, cover. Only one had a cover still but it rang a faint bell. Looking for copyrights, they dated to the late 1910s. They were in pretty rough shape. Damp staining, wear to the edges, chipping. Eh, why not? I took them inside and paid my quarter for both. I went home and found out these were very early Jehovah’s Witnesses tracts. I don’t remember the exact amount, but I recieved over $200 for the two of them after a week on Ebay. I certainly won’t forget Watchtower again!
Next, from Jonathan:
A few months ago, after mulling the idea of getting a part time job, I decided to sell books online from my basement. Basically, I’m your [Book Hunter's Holiday] antithesis. I had no direction or plan. I just thought I would go out to a few books sales and thrift stores, buy a bunch of books and sell them on Amazon. My first day out, I found an old German book called Weltriese. It was a 1912 travel guide for Germans traveling to Asia. Beautiful book with dozens of fold out maps. And like an idiot I sold it on ebay for $50 (ironically tosomeone on the Biblio list). That book, though, was the one that got me hooked.
Now I’m torn between being the guy who wants to make a quick buck to pay off a credit card and the guy that wants to invest in beautiful old books that make take years to sell. Your enthusiasm and obvious love for the business make me lean toward the latter.
(Thanks, Jonathan.)
When I asked him about using his story in this post, Jonathan had this to say:
I think there are there are a good number of booksellers who view books with a scanner and really only see them as a tradeable commodity. On the other end is the dealer who truly loves books, and buys and sells pieces of art. I think my bread and butter is the high turnover books that I make $10 on. That is me trying to make a buck. But every once in a while you come across a book that you know you are going to sell, but are sad to let go, especially when it’s something that you never knew anything about. My head is the guy with the scanner, my heart is the guy that is slowly leafing through obscure 19th century tomes.
Finally, Lahana at Pandora’s Books wrote:
Fingerspitzgefuhl, the term I learned from the ladies Rostenberg and Stern, is the exact word I use to describe my method for choosing books for my inventory or personal collection when people ask me: “What are you looking for?” I have a general interest in non-fiction, history, anthropology, and travel journals in particular. I love illustrated books, and pick up just about any folklore or fairy tale. I tell folks: “Sometimes I don’t know until I pick a book up.”
So far, my favorite find from that sale was a book I nearly put back. The title is FROGS INTO PRINCES, the subtitle being Neuro-Linguistic Programming, I found it in the self-help section. I picked it up because it was an unusual topic, and I really liked the groovy-looking illustrated cover. I didn’t actually research it before I listed it on eBay for 99cents. A few days later the bidding was up to $15 with 11 people watching it. Then I got curious, and saw that on Amazon the cheapest copy is listed at $37. That’s my favorite find, because it really didn’t look like much, and I just had a hunch.
Another recent sale in Colville WA: I was early, and found lots of good trade paperbacks. My best find though was a two-volume set of THE COMBUSTION HANDBOOK, 3rd Edition. I didn’t hesitate to pick them up, because of the very specific topic, and the good condition. I sold them within two weeks for a nice hundred dollar profit.
My favorite finds are the ones that prompt me to learn more about our world, history, and people. I love sending these little gems out into the world, and I am continually amazed that there is always somebody who is interested in some obscure subject.
