COLUMBIA, SC--Forgive me, please, for using a dateline, but I'm an old newspaperman, and since I'm in the field, as it were, at the South Carolina Book Festival, using one in this instance seems perfectly appropriate.

 This posting will be fairly brief, because it's not quite noon on Saturday morning, and I have a presentation to make in a couple hours, offering a tribute to the late Matthew J. Bruccoli, who died last year at 76. I wrote about Matt on a number of occasions--first in Fine Books & Collections, later as a featured profile in my 2005 book, "Every Book Its Reader" (p. 193-208). Matt was a lot of things--scholar, writer, teacher, editor, publisher, consummate collector of F. Scott Fitzgerald and other twentieth-century authors--but most of all, he was, in his own words, "a bookman." (Charles McGrath once described him in the New York Times as the "senior packrat of American letters.") In the course of our many conversations, Matt and I became good friends, so I was more than happy to accept an invitation from the good people here in South Carolina to talk about him at a festival he helped establish thirteen years ago.

Those who enjoy a Lazy-Boy recliner as their favorite reading chair yet wish it were more mobile, stylish, and even more thrilling than usual, will be pleased to learn that Russian industrial designer Irina Zhdanova has dreamed up a solution so that comfy reading on the move, with zero fuel costs, avant-garde looks, AND built-in thrills and bookshelf is now a reality.

Clearly the photographer who imagined the reader seated in the photo didn't capture the essence of the Rolling Reader, which is essentially an amusement park ride as envisioned for the thrill-seeking text-junkie unwilling to engage motor neurons in pursuit of sensation. As depicted, however, the reader is seated in a very uncomfortable position: Slouched, with no back support, this person is headed for Sciatica City.

No, the optimal way to use the Rolling Reader is to drape one's length along the cushioned inside rim in lazy, languorous, louche, decadent bum mode (I may be projecting personal behavior here, but you get the idea). While all the big, heavy books are shelved at the bottom for low center of gravity and ballast, a little body English will be all that is necessary to get you moving. 

How many times has this happened to you: You're reading on the couch and so comfortable that you dare not move a muscle lest the spell be broken but if you don't have a handful of popcorn Right Now! you may spontaneously combust? Yes, it's only twenty steps to the kitchen but for the seriously sedentary ambulation is overrated. 

Problem now solved: Just roll yourself from the living room to the kitchen and back again (don't forget to bring the bag of popcorn back with you).

A few basic necessities are conspicuously absent: Brakes, and for those who wish to read al fresco on city streets, seat belts. It'd probably be a good idea to stuff the bookshelf tight with tomes before putting the rolling reader into gear; flying first editions are not a pretty sight. Use the bike/reading lane. Don't forget to use hand signals when turning, a quick thrust of the glutes to one side or another all that's necessary for left-right maneuvers.

And while it should go without saying, please have reader's insurance should you be involved in an accident.

The new Crawley library opened in West Sussex relatively recently. It contains some striking architectural/artistic elements...notably remarkable textual trees.  

We've all gotten pretty used to looking for books electronically--and nobody is a more appreciative user of abebooks.com than yours truly--with the result that most dealers, for one reason or another, but usually because of the considerable production costs involved, have moved away from the printed catalogs, which is a shame, because there is still nothing like getting a lively new list of offerings in the mail, and going through it with the kind of leisured approach such an exercise demands.

I was reminded of this by the arrival a few days ago of not one, but two, impressive catalogs,  each one a splendidly assembled list of collectible material, with every item scrupulously researched, authoritatively described, and beautifully illustrated. 

Especially noteworthy is "The Bruce Kahn Collection," issued jointly by Ken Lopez Books of Hadley, Mass., and Tom Congalton, owner of Between the Covers Rare Books, of Gloucester City, NJ, a one-collector catalog that in itself is something of a rarity. The 154 items listed represent the creme de la creme of a 15,000-volume collection of modern first editions gathered over many years by Bruce Kahn, a Michigan lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions; other books in the collection will be offered in later catalogs. 

In a prefatory note, Lopez explains that Kahn collected in the "style of the old-time book collectors," meaning he sought out authors "in depth, pursuing all their published titles, variant editions, such as proofs, advance copies and broadsides." In a note of his own, Congalton quips that he agreed to have Lopez, his partner in this collaboration of two prominent booksellers,  be general editor of the catalog, and write the descriptions, for the paradoxical reason that he knows the collection too well, having sold many of these same books to Kahn in the first place. "I got sick of writing 'Very fine in dustwrapper. Signed by the author.' Where's the fun in that, anyway?"

And impressive, as always, is the latest catalog from William Reese Co., of New Haven, Conn.--his 266th --this one featuring 205 choice selections of Western Americana. In addition to being one of the outstanding booksellers of his generation--I was pleased to have a profile of Bill in the chapter I called "Hunters and Gatherers" in Patience & Fortitude--he is also one of the leading scholars in his field. Numerous entries in this new catalog bear that out, with comprehensive, detailed descriptions that are little essays in their own right.

The item on the cover--pictured herewith at right--is a detail from an 1893 oil painting titled "Buffalo Bill and the Frenchman's Bottle Gag," a comic tableau from the Wild West Show, by the French artist Alfred Agoust. 

According to the catalog entry, almost all images of the Wild West Show are to be found in lithographic posters and photographs. "Period oil paintings of the Buffalo Bill act are very rare indeed." The price for this rarity: $47,000.  Happily, I have the catalog in hand to enjoy. 

After three days at CODEX, I attended my first ABAA book fair. I had dragged my suitcase, to which now were added several bags stuffed with CODEX treasure, onto the tour bus that took us into San Francisco. I figured it would be easy enough to get from our last stop, the San Francisco Center for the Book, to the hotels reserved for visitors to the 42nd California International Antiquarian book fair. This sensible-sounding plan proved somewhat harder to execute, as the hotels were nowhere near the Center for the Book, and cabs were not easy to come by at rush hour. Welcome to the big city.