"A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get."

November 6, 2014 5:09 PM

First editions, second thoughts: [New York Times] "On December 2, Christie's will auction 75 first-edition books, each of which is a unique object that has been annotated with words and/or illustrations by its author. Proceeds from the auction will benefit PEN American Center."
posted by Fizz (6 comments total)

Nice! Some of these books are expensive in first edition without any further inscriptions. This is a nice collection and the beneficiary is a worthy one.
posted by janey47 at 5:20 PM on November 6, 2014

I used to get irritated by the festishization of 1st editions when I worked as a bookseller, but association copies were usually exciting to find, and interesting.

I handled most of the pre-2000 ones here at one time or another when I was a buyer, and this brought back memories of getting first crack at a fantastic poetry library in the early 90s that included Rita Dove's Ten Poems and many other rare 70s / early 80s small press titles.
posted by ryanshepard at 5:58 PM on November 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

"A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get." I think the reverse is true as well for I surely have problems with Atlas Shrugged today that I didn't when I was 14.
posted by bz at 11:42 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

PEN America's auction website has more on all the books including translations when the text is in another language than English, for instance in the case of Orhan Pamuk's Snow.
posted by Kattullus at 5:10 AM on November 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

Thanks, both Fizz and Kattullus. I really love all these annotations made by the authors, could pore over them all day.
posted by aught at 6:42 AM on November 7, 2014

An even better link Kattullus, thanks for sharing.
posted by Fizz at 8:03 AM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]