Ten Pound Island Book Co.

Our Most Recent Catalog

Here’s a gathering of the fruits of two recent road trips. In each case I was working toward the future purchase of a large collection, so there was nothing coming forth immediately from those either of those two sources. But, hey – a guy’s gotta eat! So I bought what I could, where I could, enroute, and what you see is the result. I was thinking of naming this list after that ur-trucker song “Six Days on the Road,” but it was only three days in my case.

In other news, I was recently solicited by an obvious AI scam for a product called BiblioScan. The opening sentence read, “You’ve specialized in old and rare books, manuscripts, and charts pertaining to the sea since 1976.” Any time a person starts off by telling me something I already know all too well, I strongly suspect the “person” of being a machine. But not so fast! I snapped off a snotty reply and received an email response from the “person” who’d sent it. She was pissed off that I’d been so rude to her. Can robots do that? I asked my own robot what BiblioScan was and it told me the product would be useful to “thrift-store flippers.” I think I was the one who should have been pissed. Read Maritime List 377 and tell me if you think it could have been the work of a thrift-store flipper.

As usual, we will pay postage on all items shipped within the US. To order a book, please send an email to us at tenpound@tenpound.com listing item number, author and title. Best not to telephone, as I’m frequently out of the office and rely on time-stamped emails to keep everything fist come, first served. Enjoy!

Bookman’s Log

A weekly blog of news, gossip, recent adventures and acquisitions, and deep thinking about the antiquarian book trade

A beautiful, sunny  summer day, warm and dry, salty ocean perfume wafting up and down Main St., and the Seagull Opera in full cry, wheeling overhead or squabbling on rooftops. I was taking my weekly summer bike ride – no workout, no numbers to try to h … More >>