Annals of booklifting

Briefly noted: Margo Rabb’s essay “Steal These Books” in the December 20 NYT Book Review, about the shoplifting of books. There’s a lot of that going around.

Frequently stolen from St. Mark’s Bookshop in the East Village of Manhattan: volumes by Martin Amis, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, and Jack Kerouac. And

The Telegraph of London reported last year that Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel “The Virgin Suicides” was said to be “the most shoplifted book of modern times.”

Paul Auster is another popular target of booklifters.

The most frequently shoplifted books seem to be almost all by male authors. And Rabb quotes two bookstore managers saying that the thieves are mostly younger men. So it looks like a guy thing. (Of course, reliable statistics on what gets shoplifted and by whom are understandably hard to come by.)

3 Responses to “Annals of booklifting”

  1. johnwcowan Says:

    Hmm. I wonder if they are being stolen by impoverished NYU students for classes. (I love that bookstore; I hope they survive.)

  2. Alan Palmer Says:

    Somewhere I read that the most frequently shoplifted book of all is the Bible. How true that is I have no idea.

  3. Alan Palmer Says:

    Huh. I should have read Margo Rabb’s essay before commenting. 🙁

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