Rare Book Monthly

Articles - May - 2017 Issue

Booking It in South America

Walrus Books of Buenos Aires.

Walrus Books of Buenos Aires.

Hola! We finally did it. We went around Cape Horn after reading about it and talking about it for years and it was a grand adventure. We are two old traditional sailors/booksellers, who are getting too infirm to haul on the halyards and take in sail anymore so we opted to wuss out and be spoiled rotten for two weeks on The Zaandam, a Holland America cruise ship. Though it carries about 1300 people, it never seemed very crowded except during life raft drills. The ship had great food, and too much of it, a couple of good bars, an excellent crew, mostly good entertainment (though some was a bit Las Vegasy, as was the decor), and a very small library with very eclectic, mostly hardcover books, primarily mystery and adventure novels. They also had a “take one and leave one” table with paperback fiction. I took two and left two and finished them by the time our two week sail was finished. It has been tough coming home and cleaning our own house, cooking our own meals, and doing our own laundry again, I can tell you that!

 

Before we got on the ship, we had to check out a few bookstores in Argentina. Of course! Buenos Aires was our port of departure and we discovered that Buenos Aires is also known as a “book town” like Sidney in Canada, Hey-on-Wye in England, or Grass Valley/Nevada City in California. Buenos Aires touts that it has “more bookstores per person than any other city in the world”. I don’t know about that, but they have a lot of them and we only got to a very few. Buenos Aires is huge. They have 2.8 million people and about 730 bookstores. To put that in perspective, Reno, Nevada has 223,000 people and three bookstores.

 

Most of them were little, out-of-the-way bookshops with dusty, musty shelves, and worn-looking books in Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Many of the books appeared to have been in the windows for many years without benefit of a feather duster. I don’t think that counts street vendors or even sellers at flea markets, of which there are many. They have a flea market every weekend that covers about 25 blocks in old town and they close all the streets for it. We went into a few and took pictures of some of their window displays, but didn’t linger because my Spanish is less than perfect and because of our limited knowledge of South American authors.

 

The reason there are so many bookstores, according to the Argentineans, is that “Argentina’s love affair with the book is related to the wave of mass immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A century ago, Buenos Aires was the shining capital of one of the wealthiest countries of the world. European immigrants poured into Buenos Aires, creating a multicultural environment in which culture and the arts thrived.”…The Guardian. The revolutions and dictatorships took a toll, but then if you know there is shooting in the streets, perhaps staying home with a good book is preferable!

 

Unlike Costa Rica, South America is not really big on speaking English and my Spanish is pretty much limited to getting around from place to place, ordering food, and finding hotels. We had a limited amount of exploration time before we sailed away so we concentrated on the old town area where we were staying, San Telmo, and visited about 20 bookstores, only two of which carried English language books.

 

The first was Walrus Books run by Geoffrey Hickman and Josefina Sanchez. They have new and used books and sell or trade books with the English speaking ex-pat community. Geoffrey is an ex-pat from Maryland, U.S. and Josefina is Argentinean. They have been in business about ten years and their small but mighty bookstore is packed with good literature, especially South American writers such as Allende, Borges, and Marquez. I had already finished two books by the time I got there, so I was searching for reading material. The store was relatively busy when we were there so we didn’t get much chance to chat with Geoffrey. I bought Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie to re-read and an Allende that I hadn’t read, The Japanese Lover. It was very good. I’ve loved most all her books but Island Beneath the Sea is still my current favorite. Her book Maya’s Notebook, which I recently read, took place in an island off Porto Montt at the end of Northern Patagonia, which we passed by on the ship.

Rare Book Monthly

  • Freeman’s | Hindman
    Western Manuscripts and Miniatures
    July 8, 2025
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUM (active Milan, 1431-1459). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
    Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
    Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    17th July 2025
    Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
    Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
    Now through July 10, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern
    Now through July 10, 2025
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
    Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.
  • Rare Book Hub is now mobile-friendly!
  • DOYLE
    Rare Books, Autographs & Maps
    July 23, 2025
    DOYLE, July 23: WALL, BERNHARDT. Greenwich Village. Types, Tenements & Temples. Estimate $300-500
    DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
    DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
    DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
    DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
    DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800

Article Search

Archived Articles