Category: Essays

As I write this sentence I’m surrounded by old friends. About 1,500 of them. The bulk of my books, stacked on seven tightly packed bookshelves. You can see a few of them in my header.

I’m putting them all up for sale. Well, not all. I’m not willing, like the minions of part time booksellers on Amazon.com, to list thousands of titles priced between $0.01 and $2.00 (my guess, hoping to make a dollar or two on handling and shipping). And there are a few I can’t part with. Yet. So I’ve decided to list the ones that, after painstaking research, appear to be worth at least $10.00, while not so dear to my heart that it would haunt me to see them go.

My rationale is that no one in my family will want them. I have a cinematic vision of the reading of my will, and when the executor says, “And my library of books, I bequeath to…” nervous eyes exchange glances, lips mouthing “please, not me.”  So why not monetize the holdings now, most of which were carefully selected from book sales and remainder tables, long before the practiced eye was replaced with a mindless scanner.

If you see something you like above, let me know.

P.S. The Bruce Jay Friedman, Harufs, Kinsellas, and Elmore Leonard are signed.

An extended essay on this top is now available at themillions.com: http://www.themillions.com/2013/08/goodbye-old-friends-on-selling-my-books.html

To visit my bookstore (LTMadison Books) on biblio.com: http://www.biblio.com/bookstore/ltmadison-books-madison

Tennis has been a big part of my life. My first jobs were on tennis courts. I worked for the United States Tennis Association for close to a decade. I’ve written a book on tennis and published articles on tennis in: World Tennis, Tennis, Racquet, Tennis Week, Indianapolis Magazine, AmericanWay and Continental (the airline mags), and many more. My book is now a rarity (a perfect demonstration of the difference between scarcity and value) and finding my magazine articles would frustrate the greatest archivist. Still, a few of them are still buried somewhere out there in the world wide web. Here’s one, which is particularly apt, since its subject matter matches my tennis nostalgia as my ability to play fades and as I retire from the volunteer coaching I’ve maintained for the past 20 or so years.

Did I mention I taught my boys how to play? That’s Zach up above:

Tennis Memorabila, an article from Private Clubs Magazine: http://64.251.194.106/Archives/1998-july-aug/sports_mpracket.htm

Here is a rather crude scan of my article on summer camp that was published in Vol. XLV, Winter 2013 of the Western States Jewish History journal.

In order to view this without standing on your head, after opening right click and select “rotate clockwise.”

OlinSang

My reminiscence about summer camp in the 1960s was recently published in a journal called Western States Jewish Studies. You might check at your local newsstand.

I love the abstract from EBSCO, one of the standard databases of obscure journals:

“A personal narrative is presented in which the author reflects on attending the Olin Sang Institute, a Jewish summer camp, in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, with focus given to meals, discipline, and the use of firecrackers.”

You can see if your library has access by checking here: http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/84592218/olin-sang-institute-1963

I’ll see if it’s kosher to post some or all of it here. Stay tuned for the fireworks.

For those of you gamers out there:

http://www.fnatic.com/news/10225/fnatic-origins-episode-1.html