The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana. (Update: Larry died yesterday, March 25, 2021). He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown neighbourhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988 he opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a "Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 titles. McMurtry is well-known for the film adaptations of his work, especially Hud (from the novel Horseman, Pass By), The Last Picture Show; James L. Brooks's Terms of Endearment, and Lonesome Dove, which became an enormously popular television mini-series. In 2006, he was co-winner (with Diana Ossana) of both the Best Screenplay Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. I interviewed him ( in 2008) as part of a project I was working on for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest, Books: A Memoir, his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of the hunt, book-scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality, keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining number of used book stores, and optimism for the future.

Richard Nash is a coach, strategist, and serial entrepreneur. He led partnerships and content at the culture discovery start-up Small Demons and the new media app Byliner. Previously he ran independent publishers Soft Skull Press and Red Lemonade where he published Maggie Nelson, Lynne Tillman, Vanessa Veselka's Zazen, Alain Mabanckou, and many others. He was awarded the Association of American Publishers' Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005.

We met via Zoom (as I'm sure you'll be able to tell) to talk more about his article 'What is the Business of Literature?', about where publishing has been, technology and "the shock of the old," repurposing technology, essential reading, the influence of capitalism on publishing, copyright, great books not seeing the light of day, dance floors, reading, and the richness of book history.

Will Schwalbe has spent most of his life in publishing: at William Morrow, and then at Hyperion, where he was Editor in Chief. In January 2008 he left Hyperion to found a startup called Cookstr.com and ran that for six years. It's now part of Macmillan Publishers, where he has worked since 2014.

His books include Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do it Better with his friend David Shipley. The End of Your Life Book Club, about the books he read with his mother when she was dying. And Books For Living, about the role books can play in our lives and how they can show us how to live each day more fully and with more meaning. He lives in New York City with his husband David Cheng

In addition to Books for Living, we talk about Faber, Sonny Mehta, Rohinton Mistry, reasons for reading, adults reading to children - and their conversations, greater powers, book clubs, cook books, Christopher Isherwood, giving and sharing conversations about books for birthdays, tyranny, and my new venture, Literary Retreats.

Since 2012, Jason Rovito has been working with institutional and private collectors to grow the documentary value of their collections "because the Cloud forgets." Subject strengths include: the avant-garde, design, the human sciences, and visual culture across the full spectrum of Special Collections formats: rare books, ephemera, manuscripts, photographs, prints, audio/visual materials, and archives.

Jason is a member of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of Canada (ABAC), and the Ephemera Society of America (ESA), and is committed to their codes of ethics. Based in Toronto, he regularly exhibits at fairs in New York, Toronto, and London.

Jason has been touted by many as one of the talented "new antiquarians" who are discerning value in all sorts of interesting and unusual places. We talk about this entrepreneurial tradition among successful bookseller down the ages; about Italy, and prisons, and virtual book fairs, and much more.

Marc Côté is President of Cormorant Books, a literary publishing house noted for its discovery and development of Canadian writing talent and the publishing of Quebecois fiction translated into English. He has won Canada's Libris Award for editor of the year twice, and Cormorant has won the Libris Award for small presses three times. At Cormorant Marc has acquired and edited many award-nominated books.

The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published by Scribner's in 1925. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island it depicts narrator Nick Carraway's relationship with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, and Gatsby's obsessive desire to reunite with his former lover Daisy Buchanan.

The Biblio File Book Club is series of book discussions with smart people about books that they believe are important; books they would recommend to loved ones...books they consider to be essential reading.

Zoom wasn't behaving very well during our conversation, so apologies for the irritating distortions, etc.

Dan Mozersky enjoyed a long and fruitful career in the retail book industry. As a founding member of Indigo Books & Music's executive team he was instrumental in turning the company's vision into reality ( we talk about this in Part ll of our conversation).

During the 1990s he served as manager of U.S. Operations for Classic Books in New York. Prior to this he founded and owned a chain of retail bookstores in Ottawa and Montreal.

Active in the Canadian Booksellers Association, he served as director, vice president, and chair of various industry committees. In 1985 he was recognized by the Canadian Book Publishers' Professional Association as bookseller of the year.

We talk here in Part l of our conversation about how Dan built his successful chain of bricks and mortar bookstores.

The son of prominent book collector Kenneth E. Hill, Jonathan A. Hill grew up in a house filled with old books. After graduating from university in 1974 he served a classic apprenticeship, working for four leading antiquarian booksellers in San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. In 1978 he started his own company and has specialized in science, medicine, natural history, bibliography and the history of book collecting, and early printed books.

For the past 20 years he has, partnering with his wife Megumi, also sold antiquarian Japanese, Chinese, and Korean illustrated books, manuscripts, and scrolls.

During the past 43 years the company has issued more than 230 catalogues devoted to these various subjects.

It is thanks to them that I contacted Jonathan. We talk here about his (and Jerry Kelly's) impressive work, and about bookseller catalogues in general.