The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

• Publisher:   Riverhead Hardcover
• Number Of Pages:   288
• Publication Date:   2009-09-17
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   1594488916
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9781594488917

In the tradition of The Orchid Thief, a compelling narrative set within the strange and genteel world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him. Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be. Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure. With a mixture of suspense, insight, and humor, she has woven this entertaining cat-and-mouse chase into a narrative that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them. Immersing the reader in a rich, wide world of literary obsession, Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.

This true story is a great read for anyone who loves books. This story follows our author through her introduction to the book collecting world and one of the world's largest bad guys-John Gilkey. The story follows Bartlett as she learns the ropes of the collecting world and her interactions with a very active book thief Gilkey. There is a great parallel between Bartlett's connection to some of the greatest collectors and sellers of fine books and to an amazing book thief. I really enjoyed this book because of the look it gave me into the world of book collecting. I never knew that book collecting was such serious business and that thieves like Gilkey were a part of this world. I also loved how Bartlett gave us an in depth look into the mind of this thief. This look allowed us to see what people think about when they are obsessed about something, book collecting in Gilkey's case. Although I really did enjoy this book it might not be for everything. I think someone who does not love books as much as I do might not enjoy the detailed looks into the collecting world that Bartlett gives. An "outsider" if you will, might find the book collecting details unnecessary or overdone. Again, personally I enjoyed this part of the book, but not everyone might. Overall I would suggest this book to my many book loving friends.

The title of this book alone was enough to draw me in. I'm a compulsive reader and book buyer, though I don't have the mania (or the budget) to acquire first editions and other rarities that drive some bibliomaniacs. This is an interesting journey into the world of rare books and a great detective story rolled into one. The author has found an intriguing hero and a complex villain. The bad guy is John Charles Gilkey, a book thief who plundered the shelves of rare book stores from coast to coast. His reign of thievery is brought to an end by book dealer Ken Sanders, who built a network that collected the pieces of information and stitched them into the mosaic that led to Gilkey's capture.by authorities. Bartlett immersed herself in the rare book word, a realm that was new to her. Though she was a passionate reader, she had never before visited the shops and fairs where the trade does business. Before too long, she is caught up in the romance for first editions, original manuscripts and other ephemera shared by collectors. Bartlett spends time with both of her leading actors, but her primary focus is on Gilkey. She wants to know what drove him to plan and carry out such audacious thefts, some with the assistance of his father In a series of conversations with Gilkey, some of them literally at the scenes of his former crimes, Bartlett learns that Gilkey, like so many of us, is under the spell of books. He appreciates their beauty, their power, their magic. Like so many of us, he wants to own beautiful and important works. Unlike most of his, he has persuaded himself that his entitlement to them is so strong that he has the right to acquire them by any means necessary. He wants the status a fine library will confer upon him; yet he assembles it in a way that means he will never be able to show it off to anyone. That is the ultimate paradox of John Charles Gilkey, an apparently intelligent, but amoral man.--William C. Hall

A true-crime story about a man who steals rare books and another man who was determined to catch him.
John Gilkey, loves rare books and envy's those with enough money to collect them. So he feels perfectly justified with stealing as many as he can through various fraudulent means. Ken Sanders is a bookseller who becomes security chair of the Antiquarian Bookseller's Association of America. He discovers that there have been many thefts with similar MO's. He develops a faster mode of reporting and tracking these crimes throughout the country and becomes obsessed with catching Gilkey. Bartlett becomes interested in the collecting of rare books and the stories of thefts told to her by different sellers. She meets Ken Sanders and becomes fascinated by the story of Gilkey, who is currently in prison, charged with the thefts of a few of the books he stole. She goes to the prison to meet with Gilkey and interviews him many times, even after he is released. She is drawn into Gilkey's version of events, and how he takes no responsibility for his crimes, he won't even refer to what he does as stealing. Despite his jail time he is still determined to acquire books and tells her of some of his ideas, making her wonder where she draws the line as a journalist. I love books about books. Reading a book about other people obsessed with books was just too irresistible. And this book did not disappoint. Besides the main story about Gilkey, she also tells of various book collectors in history and the world of rare books and booksellers. Though a non-fiction book, it reads quickly like a novel and sucked me right into Gilkey's world. Once I finally got started, I could not put it down. I'm just glad I can't afford to become a rare book collector, because I have a feeling I would be as obsessive as some of the people I read about. Though, I'm quite sure I would not go to the lengths Gilkey did. At least I hope not! This was an amazing read that I really enjoyed and strongly recommend, especially to my fellow bibliophiles. my rating 4/5

A compulsive behaviour, love of rare, antiquated books, a passion for possessing such rarities, lead Gilkey, the book kleptomaniac, to discover new, elusive ways of procuring and harbouring a wide selection of literary books going back a century to the Golden period of literature with Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and such renown Twentieth Century and widely read novels as Vladimir Nabokov's, Lolita. Gilkey, with his taste for book bordering on the connoiseur of haute `joie de vie', samples the book's smell of `age, feels its crispness' and run his eyes over it for visible defects, (p 107) and like a true collector, is only satisfied when there are none. The author's curiosity of finding out what motivates Gilkey to commit such crimes, takes us back into his childhood and to a large family of eight, living in Modesto, California in the rural town of San Joaquin Valley where the first inhabitants sought wealth and a better life, during the Gold Rush. Now, it prides itself in being considered, the `All American' town, which conceals the ugly truth of its high and violent crime and rape rate.
In looking at Gilkey's upbringing, there was a tendancy for him to steal as child and not being reprimanded even for stealing a `catcher's mitt' (p 59) in a store, his obsession for stealing rare books grew out of this childhood tendancy to `take' without thinking of the consequences; further to which his elder brothers and sisters didn't set an example with their remorseless pilfering from each other even into adulthood. Maybe it answers the author's questions in her interview of Gilkey, of why the love of rare books? Why steal and why risk it? We come to realise why and the intricate details of the rarity of the books described in this revealing and true story explains Gilkey's `ache to buy' (p 75) a rare book for his large collection - he cannot help but savour the smells and sensation he would get from them. The author captures each moment with the book collectors, the book detective and with Gilkey himself, in a richly warm tone which reminds me of the beautifully bound `tome' with its rimmed edged pages, nicely carving out a true story of a man who stole so many books, it reads as `fiction' as to why he was never caught sooner.

I confess, I'm a bibliomaniac. But I'm not the kind of monomaniacal collector of first editions who commits credit card fraud in order to waltz off with first editions of classic novels to which he feels entitled, as was (and perhaps still is?) the case with John Gilkey, the "man who loved books too much" of the title. Allison Hoover Bartlett does a thorough and creditable job of giving readers insight into the arcane world of rare book dealers and into the mind of an obsessive collector, who figures that the high prices of these cherished objects mean that it's just fine for him to steal in order to build his collection. Gilkey can't even describe what the books mean to him -- it's the aesthetics, he ultimately tells Bartlett; he likes the way they look all lined up on a shelf -- but that doesn't stop him from compulsively and self-destructively doing whatever it takes to add to his collection, even after he's been arrested at least twice. Sentenced to three years on one occasion, Gilkey serves 18 months; it seems, he says, "an awfully long time to be behind bars for liking books." This is an intriguing glimpse into a world that even many avid readers will find new -- that of the rare and antiquarian book trade. At the same time, however, the story itself too often felt like a magazine article expanded in length but not in scope to fill a book. There's a lot of repetition (particularly the author's musings about Gilkey's motives and discussions of his tactics) and not enough action. More problematic for me, at least, was the author herself was far too present in the story. Everything is seen through her eyes, even when I as a reader hungered for her to take a step back and let the protagonists -- the booksellers and Gilkey -- tell me directly or indirectly what transpired. There were some occasions where that tactic clicked, as when Bartlett accompanies Gilkey to visit a bookstore after his release from prison, and chronicles the tension in the air as he prowls through the shelves, watched with thinly-veiled hostility by the storeowner; or when she comments that the rare book dealer who sets out to nab Gilkey -- the hero -- is a more difficult person to deal with than is Gilkey, the criminal. On many other occasions, however, it falls flat, as when she rambles for several pages about the possible motivations of Gilkey. "What must it be like, I wondered, to view the world in such a way, to feel entitled to all one desired and to be able to justify to oneself any means of obtaining it?" It's also frustrating to hear her muse about the questions she wanted to ask him but didn't (if the questions were important, why not ask them? And if not, why bother to mention them?) When she gets a glimpse into Gilkey's room, including a closet filled with books, she doesn't scrutinize them in search of stolen items. "Later, I would curse my lack of courage." But we never learn why or in what circumstances she did so. Intriguingly, Bartlett comes to question her own complicity with Gilkey -- he begins confessing to her, and tries to give her a satisfactory ending to the book. "I was still trying to cling to the notion that I was recording a story that was progressing without my influence. I was not going to become its director," she writes; at the same time, one of the booksellers she interviews tells her, bitterly, that giving Gilkey a forum for his views is making him too public a figure, and compares the book thief to mass murderer Charles Manson. I've rated this 3.5 stars for a solid story well-told, and rounded it up to 4 stars because of Bartlett's ability to tell great stories about collecting and books, as well as her insights into how she, too, may be a collector, albeit of a different kind than Gilkey. Writing this book was obviously a transformative experience for Bartlett; I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to any fellow bibliomaniac, but Gilkey's story didn't have the same impact on me as it did the author. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in books and collecting; others may find it interesting. There are several other excellent books out there with similar themes. In particular, a great five-star read about bibliomania is GENTLE MADNESS: BIBLIOPHILES, BIBLIOMANES, AND THE ETERNAL PASSION FOR BOOKS.|A (although it seems to be scarce enough to be a Gilkey target in its own right!), while To Have and To Hold by Philipp Blom is one of several books exploring the idea of collecting.

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