Books: A Memoir [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Larry McMurtry (Author), William Dufris (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 2008

Larry McMurtry is known to be reclusive and extremely private, rarely giving interviews or making public appearances. Audiences are therefore sure to be eager to read this intimate and surprisingly personal memoir of the brilliant writer's love affair with books. McMurtry writes about his life as a boy growing up in a largely bookless world; as a young man devouring the world of literature; as a fledgling writer and family man; and as one of America's most prominent "bookmen," becoming the astute and adventurous collector who would eventually open stores of rare and collectible books in Georgetown, Houston, and his hometown of Archer, Texas.In Books: A Memoir, McMurtry gives us a lively look at the eccentrics who collect, sell, or simply lust after rare books. Books is like the best kind of diary-full of wonderful anecdotes, amazing characters, great gossip, and shrewd observations about authors, book people, literature, and himself. At once chatty, revealing, and deeply satisfying, Books is, like its author, erudite, life-loving, and full of great stories.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: It wasn't enough for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry to become one of the most prolific, bestselling, and beloved of American writers. Besides writing nearly forty books, including the Pultizer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, he has emerged as one this nation's greatest bookmen. In Books: A Memoir, McMurtry shares with readers his lifelong passion and dogged pursuit of books. In short, gem-like chapters, he paints a fascinating picture of the landscape of American book culture and book selling over a 50-year period. The story is as dusty, musty and crusty as any of McMurtry's fictionalized Westerns, and filled with characters who seem like they stepped out of central casting. Whether you love McMurtry, books, bookstores or a combination thereof, you'll find something to love in Books: A Memoir. Settle in with a cuppa coffee and let McMurtry kindle your passion for physical books. --Lauren Nemroff --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Despite McMurtry’s well-deserved reputation as a writer, including a Pulitzer Prize and more than a handful of best sellers, critics are unsure about his latest effort. They cite it as an uneven volume that glosses over some important characters and anecdotes (or, conversely, delves a bit too much into the details of book collecting) and doesn’t advance its purported mission of offering a “memoir” of the reticent author’s life in books. Some of the vignettes seem to have been dashed off almost as an afterthought, though McMurtry’s style can be an acquired taste. Still, even if Books doesn’t transcend its limited subject matter and won’t win over many readers not already familiar with McMurtry’s story, devotees will enjoy digging alongside the bookman, thrilling to the next great discovery.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,Unabridged CD edition (June 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400108055
• ISBN-13: 978-1400108053
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,885,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Books on CD > Authors, A-Z > ( M ) > McMurtry, Larry

More About the Author

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Academy Award. His most recent novel, When the Light Goes, is available from Simon & Schuster. He lives in Archer City, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for book lovers written by a book lover, July 2, 2008

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Books: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Those of us who love books are, I think, always excited when we run across an accomplished author who shares our bibliomania and writes about it in a loving and erudite way. Larry McMurtry of Lonesome Dove and "Brokeback Mountain" (the screenplay) fame has done precisely this in his wonderful memoir Books.

Books is a memoir that traces McMurtry's life stages through his relationship with books--thousands and thousands of them, those in the library of the university he attended, those in his personal library (upwards of 30,000 volumes), those in his used and antiquarian bookstore Booked Up (300,000 and counting). Books have enriched his inner life and helped him hone his skills as an author. But they've also enriched his economic existence too, since he's been in the used book trade for nearly half a century now (something I didn't know until reading this memoir). His first book sale in 1962, for example, paid for his first son's birth.

One of the reasons I so like McMurtry's book is that it reminds me of my own life trajectory. McMurtry tells us that he was raised in an utterly bookless Texas ranch house. He never owned a book until 1942, when a guy headed off to war gave him a box of adventure stories. McMurtry was eight years old, and the minute he got the taste of the printed word in his mouth, he never looked back. I spent much of my childhood in a similarly bookless wasteland (in the south, not the southwest), and as I read McMurtry's description of his growing excitement, absorption, and sense of liberation in the magic of books once he discovered them, it was as if I was reading about myself. And, like all good books about books, this one makes me want to read books it mentions. It also makes me want read the novels of McMurtry's I haven't gotten around to yet and get myself to Texas to browse in Booked Up.

McMurtry's Books uses stories about book-collecting, book-selling, and book-enjoying as milestones for his autobiography. His memoir not only tells us something about his own life, but also shares a lot of delightful stories about fellow booksellers and bibliophiles. (My favorite is about the California-based bookseller who kept binoculars in his shop so that customers could read the titles on the top shelves.) There's a certain nostalgic melancholy in the memoir too, because one senses--and so does McMurtry--that the used bookshop is becoming quaint and endangered in our age of huge chain retailers of books.

McMurtry started out bookless, but he's gone a long way since then. He brought a huge bookstore to a town (New Archer, Texas) that he says was as utterly bookless as his childhood home, and he's brought several excellent books of his own to the rest of us. (With typical modesty, he tells us in Books that although a few of his own novels have been "really good," none are great.) Books: A Memoir is his latest gift to us all.

Five stars.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For the love of books, and the love of collecting, July 19, 2008

By 

Paul Allaer (Cincinnati) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Books: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Larry McMurtry (now age 72) has a long-established and well-honored career as an author and Hollywood screenwriter (including winning an Oscar for "Brokeback Mountain"), but for some reason it had never occurred to him that people might want to read about his joy of and for books, and collecting them. That has finally corrected with this book.

In "Books: A Memoir" (259 pages), McMurtry brings his tales of how he fell in love reading books, growing up in Archer City, TX, and how that love eventually lead to becoming a book scout, dealer and eventually book store owner, Booked Up in Georgetown, in DC, starting in the early 70s. The book is a delight to read from start to finish, bringing out his love for reading (and writing) but just as importantly collecting. In that sense, this could be applied to many other fields (as I love scouring used vinyl and CD bins for that rare album find). The book is made up of 108 chapters, which fly by mostly in a couple of pages. His memories of what it was like to scout for books in the 60s and 70s are just a delight.

McMurtry and his business partner eventually established the Booked Up store in Washington, more specifically on 31th & M in Georgetown. What memories this brings back to me. I was a grad student in Washington in the mid-80s, and remember going there, not buying much, but simply amazed at the wealth of books in the store. As McMurthy describes in the book, Booked Up left Georgetown (due primarily to rising lease expenses) and is now in his home town of Archer City, TX. Not sure that I will make it out there anytime soon. That said, "Books: A Memoir" is a fantastic read. Highly recommended!

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Big disappointment; bigger waste of time, November 28, 2008

By 

Craig Alan "CAP" (Los Angeles, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Books: A Memoir (Hardcover)

McMurtry's works are erratically brilliant, sometimes downright bad, but this is a huge disappointment. Sloppy, badly in need of an editor (how many Bostwana "late" references do we need?), way too random and dropping names so frequently that we either don't know or don't care about...the whole effect is "who cares?" And I happen to love books, frequent second hand booksellers and have some familiarity with the turf described.To say nothing of being -- more times than not -- a fan of McMurtry's. But this book is hardly a memoir and, frankly, if not for the author's fame, I seriously doubt this would have ever been published. It's that big a waste of time.