RaveDaily MailShould you be one of those incapable of passing a second-hand bookshop without entering, and then, once inside, breathe in that unique perfume of musty old paper, tobacco, leather, tea and biscuit as if it were fine wine...then you will love Rick Gekoski\'s lively stories of adventures in the book trade...Not that Gekoski in interested in what\'s merely \'second-hand\'...Far from it; he deals in rarities worth thousands and (you feel) can recognise the difference between a first edition signed by James Joyce in a good mood and one signed when he\'d just had a quarrel with Nora...Only kidding, of course, but the man knows his stuff...This wonderfully gossipy, sharply written memoir is an antidote to any illusion that the world of books is rarefied and \'gentlemanly\'...On the contrary, it\'s full of wheeler-dealers, thuggish business practices, naked greed, double-dealing and vainglorious delusion...Gekoski\'s swashbuckling stories reveal a trade that is certainly not for cissies. That\'s precisely what makes this book as engrossing as it is entertaining.
