My favorite part of being a student in Heidelberg twenty years ago was the exploration of local second-hand and rare bookshops. I would dot into their basements on my way home from lectures, and in spite of my modest budget always emerge with something interesting, entertaining, or beautiful to add to my shelves, to join books rescued from family attics and flea markets. My partner and fellow-
Charing Cross Road
Earlier this month, an antiquarian bookshop in Toronto unveiled "The Biblio-Mat," a gorgeous vending machine containing antiquarian books. The Biblio-Mat rests in a corner of the bookshop where it awaits customers to try their luck by inserting $2.00 into the machine. It then dispenses a random antiquarian book.
The machine was conceived by builder Craig Small for
Our series profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers continues today with Jonathan Kearns of Adrian Harrington in London. Jonathan also runs the Bibliodeviancy blog.
