Allison Hoover Bartlett

Allison Bartlett’s The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is a pretty misleading book title. The book follows the story of John Gilkey, who steals books because he thinks it would make him seem more refined and cultured; and Ken Sanders, a rare bookseller who actually loves books and plays the detective in helping to catch GIlkey. Really, Gilkey is a just a common book thief who uses credit card fraud to trick trusting booksellers. It would be more apt to title the book, “The Man Who Hoard Stolen Books”…or something to that effect.

The author unnecessarily inserts herself into the book and seems to sympathize with Gilkey, who is outwardly friendly to her but internally deceptive. On the other hand, she loses the trust of Sanders, after she details how she accompanied Gilkey to another rare book store which he has stolen from in the past (now why would you antagonize a bookseller like that?).

Unfortunately, in the book world, book theft is not treated seriously by the authorities, so the members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (with Sanders at the helm of the investigation) have to take it upon themselves to obtain justice.

Incidentally, I actually picked up this book from Sanders’ bookstore in Salt Lake City, and I wish the book had focused more on Sanders who seems to be more interesting figure. I bumped up a star just because the book does delve into the world of rare books. However, this really should have remained as a journal article as there was a lot of fluff, and the piece should have maintained more objectivity, considering that the author is a journalist herself.… (more)

As a librarian, who had to organize a Rare & Antiquarian Book Fair in my first professional librarian position (Illinois Wesleyan University), I found this interesting. I could relate to the booksellers and their oddities. The IWU library director warned me that they vendors were "curmudgeons"! And some of them were!

Sadly, this book goes on for 250 pages, but never really resolves the story. It was published in 2009, with the thief out of jail, but still stealing books. According to Wikipedia, he was arrested again in 2010 for stealing two antique maps. I feel like the author, Bartlett, becomes too engaged with Gilkey (the thief) to be objective. He is an unrepentant thief who blames the whole world for his problems and excuses himself as totally innocent. Hence, he steals over and over again. I don't think she appropriately criticizes him for it. Somehow, she seems impressed with him. I'm not. So, I'll give the book 4 stars for the interesting telling of the story, but that is a gift. She loses her morals in the process.… (more)

A fairly bland, surface account of a rare book thief who doesn't particularly stand out in terms of methods, _targets, motives, or psychology. He's a common-or-garden kleptomaniac with a sideline in narcissism. Why Allison Hoover Bartlett singled him out as worthy of a book's worth of attention remains somewhat of a mystery—is it too cynical of me to wonder if she focused on him because he lived (and was incarcerated) within easy distance of her? Hoover Bartlett doesn't bring much by way of interesting reflection to the topic of bibliomania (It takes her much of the book to reach the conclusion that print books persist even in the digital age because people have sentimental attachments to physical things. Fancy that), and her historical contextualisation is often weak or garbled ("After book burnings in the Middle Ages, knowledge of traditional medicine had been lost, so at the time of the Kräutterbuch's publication, in 1630, the book was a way to return to the old ways of healing, revolutionary for its time." Huh? There weren't mass burnings of herbals in the Middle Ages, we have many such manuscripts.)… (more)

The Man who Loved Books too much: the true story of a thief, a detective, and a world of literary obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett is unfortunately not the fascinating tale I was hoping for. I thought perhaps I was biased in my opinion because I had just finished Flawless, but then I read other reviews and found others who felt the same way.

I was hoping that this book would at least bring a glimpse of the not-so-nice side of the rare-book trade and collecting, but no, you didn't get that at all. Our main character, John Charles Gilkey is not as fascinating as Ms. Bartlett seems to find him. He's a thief. He's not noble thief; he steals simply because he wants the book. He's not a particularly smart thief either; he simply uses a stolen credit card or writes a bad check. He's just your run-of-the-mill thief.

Maybe I would have been okay with that portion of the tale if I really believed the man actually loved the books. He doesn't. He feels entitled to have them, so he steals them. It's not about the artwork on/in a first edition; it's about the prestige that comes from owning that first edition. It's not about the stories inside the covers either. He doesn't seem to care about that either. He simply feels like wealthy people should have a large library and therefore he's entitled to what he wants to have.

This book was unfortunately, totally disappointing and I do not recommend it.… (more)