Kiran Desai 381, Tom Jollimore 0
I don’t know about you librarians out there, but (and publishers are going to hate me) I suffer from “why buy the cow if the milk is free” syndrome. Surrounded by books and receiving hundreds of galleys every week, I am rarely motivated to actually buy a book. (And forget about giving books as presents. My friends have finally caught on, so a lavishly illustrated art book from me—usually pilfered from our discarded books cart—doesn’t count as a real gift.)
So when I want to read a book and I don’t have the galley, I turn to trusty LEO, the New York Public Library’s online catalog, to see if the library has a copy of a particular title and to place a hold on it. I was so inspired by the speeches made at last week’s NBCC awards ceremony I decide to check out some of the winners. Getting a copy of Julie Philip’s James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon was a piece of cake. There were 23 copies available in the NYPL’s branch system and three copies had been put on hold. I noticed one copy was available at the Donnell Library Branch, across the street from the Modern Museum of Art, and since I was going to a screening at MOMA, I could easily pick up that copy.
The NYPL owned only six copies of Lawrence Weschler’s Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, of which two copies appeared to be lost or stolen. There were also two holds, and I added my name to the list, making for a grand total of three holds.
The NYPL must have had high circulating hopes for Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution because it had ordered 86 copies for its branches. Unfortunately, no one had rushed to place a hold (sorry, Simon) and I was not in the mood to read his history. On the other hand, the library obviously had not ordered enough copies of Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost : A Search for Six of Six Million (56 copies, 125 holds) and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (101 copies, 381 (wow!) holds, thanks to the Booker Award, perhaps?)
I figured that Mendelsohn’s and Desai’s books would be out in paperback by the time my name got to the top of the holds list, so I decided to try my luck with the poetry winner, Tom Jollimore’s Tom Thomson in Purgatory. Not a single copy to be found in any branch. Oh, I thought, surely those Williamsburg hipsters and bohemians would have demanded a copy for their branch in the Brooklyn Public Library system. Nada. Or perhaps the multicultural Queens Borough Library had been bold enough to order a copy. No results found, said my query search.
I suspect in this case the libraries didn’t order Jollimore’s book, not out of a disdain for poetry, but because it had not been widely reviewed. As far as I can tell, Library Journal never even received an advance galley for review. One hopes that the NBCC award will encourage NYPL and other area libraries to buy at least one copy for their poetry-loving patrons. Remember April is National Poetry Month!
In my case, I am going to buy the book. Unfortunately my local independent bookseller doesn’t carry it, so thank goodness for Amazon, which makes the long tail possible.
One thing I forgot to note about the Jollimore book is that the publisher, tiny Margie/Intuit House, had initially printed only 750 copies.
Comment by Wilda Williams — March 16, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
You’re right Wilda, the Jollimore flew completely under the radar here at Queens and caught us by surprise. We have placed an order for copies!
Comment by Christopher Platt — March 20, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
Christopher, thanks for letting me know. I have heard that the publisher has gone back to press three times since Jollimore’s book won the NBCC award. I’d love to hear from NYPL. Have you ordered Tom Thomson in Purgatory?
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