A Pound of Paper
John Baxter
(Reviewer - Narayan Radhakrishnan)
2003 St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0312317255

Confessions of a book addict. In rural Australia of the '50s where John Baxter grew up, reading books was regarded with suspicion, owning & collecting them with utter incomprehension. Despite this, by the age of eleven Baxter had ‘collected’ his first book - The Poems of Rupert Brooke. This was the beginning of what would become a major collection & a lifelong obsession.

His book-hunting would take him all over the world, but his first real find was in London in 1978, when he spotted a rare copy of a Graham Greene children's book while browsing on a stall in Swiss Cottage. It was going for 5 pence. This would also, fortuitously, be the day when he first encountered one of the legends of the book-selling world: Martin Stone. At various times pothead, international fugitive from justice, & professional rock musician, he would become John's mentor & friend.

Sr. Reviewer Narayan Radhakrishnan writes:

The most perfect book for a bibliomaniac &/or the crazy book collector.

Book lovers are a CRAZY lot. Take it from me, I have often been ridiculed for my obsession for getting, possessing, buying a book I love. & what a relief it is for me to know that there are crazier guys than me, & by crazier, I mean a whole, whole lot crazier!

John Baxter in this hilarious collections of essays A Pound of Paper, explains how he became a book collector, & narrates the various exploits he did to get some rare books.

Though I wouldn't go to such an extent as the author does, I often identified myself with him. The pristine pleasure one gets in finding a rare, rare book (what is rare is often subjective) is something unmatched.

My favorite hobby is collecting the rare & out-of-print works of popular authors, such as Ken Follett & Michael Crichton who have kept hidden away their early works, the duds they did before they attained worldwide fame.

My favorite pastime is searching the old flea markets & second-hand stores for these old books -- being in India the task becomes more arduous & difficult for there is not much demand for “old English novels”. (I don't use eBay or Alibris -- the dollar/rupee conversion rate is too huge for my pocket), but I now have in my collection Gentleman of 16th July (Follett) & Binary (Crichton), which many readers might not have read.

Then again, I also enjoy collecting manuscripts of works of my favorite authors, which never saw the light -- & thus I have succeeded in including in my collection the script of the screenplay of Mickey by John Grisham & Exclusive a play hitherto unpublished by Jeffrey Archer; & thus am a proud collector of unpublished books of famous authors. (hey, what do you call such collectors?)

A Pound of Paper is a worthy buy for the bibliophile & the bibliomaniac. I wonder what my rating is among the Obsessive Book Lovers List?
(02/15/04)

Narayan
2004©Narayan Radhakrishnan
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
I am a 26 years old lawyer practicing in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Along with my legal practice, I have finished post-graduate studies for both Business Law & Human Rights. I am a self proclaimed numero-uno legal thriller lover & am the proud owner of all of Grisham's & Turow's novels. I enjoy John Mortimer's Rumpole & relish an occasional Martini & a rare Scot(ch)t-oline with a Patterson on the side.

My work A FICTION OF LAW is now about 500 pages in length & features 500 lawyer authors & 2000 legal thrillers covering a 300 year period - inclusive of entries from the USA, UK, Asia, Europe, China, Middle East etc. Still in search of a publisher.
www.keralatourism.org