Larry McMurtry’s Booked Up bookstore
Posted: May 26, 2012 Filed under: books, people, writing 2 Comments
The novelist and bookman, Larry McMurtry, opened Booked Up, a bookstore in his West Texas boyhood home of Archer City, Texas, many years ago. The bookstore is one of the finest and largest used bookstores in the world. Word has circulated that he will liquidate most of the stock and keep only his main store which is located near his home a few blocks away, where he has a personal library of around 30,000 books. Estimates of the number of his books in all his stores, which were abandoned buildings in the town, range from 300,000 to 400,000 books. The dispersion of his well-bought books will be a great loss to readers.
the roy hamric journal 
Actually, it’s a great boon to readers, as McMurtry himself puts it: they will enter the great river of books, and be available to new readers everywhere. I read that his personal library is nearly 30,000 books…and there will be 150,000 left in the main building after the auction :-).
Connie: Yes, the sell-off cuts two ways. I could browse this extraordinary story for hours at a time, not knowing the riches I might uncover. Now the the bulk of the books will be dispersed throughout the world no doubt, and the chances I will can find such a great collection in one place again is remote (well, I guess on the Internet but it’s not the same, right?). It was fun while it lasted.