The London-based, American-born rare-book dealer, writer and broadcaster Rick Gekoski is coming back next week to Sydney as a guest of the annual writers festival and as the chairman of judges for the Man Booker Prize.
Gekoski is a tremendous raconteur. I am currently reading "Tolkien's Gown & other stories of great authors and rare books" - a book of literary anecdotes in twenty chapters each one covering twenty great works of modern literature as both texts and objects. As a prominent rare-book dealer, Gekoski has a lot to tell about his bibliophilia adventures with first editions of the works including a short-lived law suit from the reclusive american writer J.D. Salinger.
His stories are fascinating and diverse, and involve memorable encounters with, among others, Graham Greene, William Golding, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes and Harold Pinter. For anyone who loves books, Tolkien's Gown offers a wealth of amusement and instruction and a desire to get hooked to the strange sentiment of satisfaction that is book collecting.
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