ABSTRACT
Over the course of my career I have written about many kinds of love, including house love, art love, Shakespeare-love, and dog love. All of these have been essential and continuing in my life, as resonant as equally precious human relations: different, but also the same. After a lifetime of experiences, I thought I had taken cognizance of my passions. But – isn’t it always the way of these things? – I was unprepared for, and surprised by, and overwhelmed by, another new love, one to which I thought I was actually pretty immune: the love of a rare book.
