About Me
Greetings.
If you've seriously clicked to look at this, I'm going to now bore you out of your mind by sharing my own personal perspective on books and life itself (see text below).
Please only read on if you have an inquiring mind which is open to all possibilities and attached to none. Otherwise you have inadvertently landed on the wrong page and you should click away immediately before being subjected to my independent and perhaps slightly unconventional manner of thinking. I don't think like most people nor do I wish to. I never have and never will. If you want the same old boring and uninspired group thought, this is not where you'll find it.
To begin, I've been dealing in a wide range of old books, maps, comics and paper ephemera since I was 12 and that was a long time ago (half a century to be precise)! The primary emphasis has always been upon visual appeal, graphic art and emotional impact.
My grandparents both came to America directly from central Italy in the early 1920's and my grandfather was independently self-employed merchant virtually his entire life. After serving in the Korean war in Japan, my father was also a self-employed business owner and merchant most of his life, and similarly, I've been self-employed most of my life- aside from my youthful U.S. Military Service and a few college jobs until I was 23 like waiter, shop clerk, line cook, elementary school librarian for a year, etc.
I got my official merchant/ book dealing start at a local Rockville, Maryland flea market when I was 12 by selling some old children's Oz books I had found in my grandfathers attic along with some of my personal comic book collection I no longer wanted. I was immediately hooked and loved it all- the entire process of being a merchant, interacting with customers and the general public and doing commerce. I somehow thought (knew?), yup, this is my calling.
After having a paper route, I got my first "real" kid job at 13-14 working a couple afternoons a week and Saturdays in my local comic book shop in Gaithersburg, Maryland (it was called the Vault of Comics, run by Andy Harper to whom I remain grateful to up until this day. His ad is in one of the earliest Overstreet guides (which I still have). This was roughly 1975.
Entering the U.S. Coast Guard after High School graduation along with 4 years of college followed. Upon college graduation with my wonderful B.A. degree in Art History, I directly entered graduate School, but a year spent there taught me I didn't truly want to pursue a lifetime spent toiling in the military structure, nor in academia or the Corporate world, etc, When I was in college all my papers were typed on a typewriter. Can you imagine such a practice today? Where's my "white-out" is a phrase I no longer use.
Instead, I decided early on to throw myself full time at the antiquarian and rare book dealing game as an independent and free spirited shop owner! No holding back, I was determined to make it happen. And so by summoning forth (and working my tail off 7 days a week for years), I opened my first public antiquarian book shop in downtown Portsmouth, NH near Prescott Park in 1985-6.
Since then I've been offering uninterrupted, an endless strong flow of old, rare, desirable, historically interesting antiquarian items with a underlying emphasis on visual appeal.
Numerous bright and well educated assistants have helped me the entire way, up until very recently (end of 2024) when I have pulled way back and begun a "semi-retired", far more leisurely and relaxed lifestyle and approach to business. I have built an enormous private reference library over the past 50 years, which is my "dukedom large enough" as Shakespeare once said. It's of a type and scale likely rarely formed today in our modern digitally based world, and ok, fair enough. So be it, all I know is it gives me enormous amount of mental pleasure to peruse and use it, and so I do as often as possible. Because I'm now allowing my etheric self to guide me, this collection is a big plus.
My collection isn't at the level of say Umberto Eco's (have you seen the video of him walking through his personal home library near the end of his life??! oh wow) or Neil Gamen's vast personal library of graphic novels, etc. But it fills an entire house apart from the one I live in and is comprised of endless shelves and book cases of scholarly, often well illustrated monographs and specialized bibliographies on all manner of all topics in various languages of history relating to the antiquarian printed world of color, graphics, engraving, lithography and printing on paper over the past 300 years. My comic book history reference library and collection of graphic novels and individual issues alone fills many rooms and a 30' x 10' storage locker. Oh yeah, there's nothing better than being an antiquarian book dealer (I'm sometimes still 12 in my mind and my wife will happily confirm it).
Along the way I've had 20+ years operating a seven days a week large, active public used & rare book shop in different locations in Portsmouth, NH, (ending with the Buckminster House at the corner of Islington street), followed for the past 20+ years by our endless flow of daily digital offerings catalogued from both downtown Dover (565 & 567 Central Ave) and Milton Mills, NH (pic above, recently sold after enjoying for 20 years).
I'm now "semi-retired" but still entirely engaged and active, which means I only do computer work when I feel inspired to (which is currently actually more than I anticipated, but this is one of the keys). I have for the past several years been a twice-daily meditator and love to spend time daily walking outside in nature, reading meaningful & interesting books, listening to spirituality and philosophical discussions, talks and lectures, sometimes traveling around the U.S. & Europe and generally spending as much time focused in the present moment as possible. Digital life is useful and great, but for me, currently the real world of here and now off a screen is better. The glows are different.
I used to actively participate in various social media platforms such as Youtube videos, shop and personal FB pages, "Twitter" (heaven help us all), Instagram, etc. It was all good fun while it lasted, but doing it daily inevitably metastasizes and corrupted my etheric sense of being. It didn't result in anything resembling peace of mind nor internal serenity or balance, etc.
If we're being honest, the intense, never ending pace of the current digital super-highway combined with the enhanced AI-driven monetization of attention-seeking manipulation of virtually all public digital life & social media generates a negative, and entirely unhealthy mental energy flow (in me anyway) which doesn't allow me to feel harmonious, happy or peaceful at all. In fact, quite the opposite.
I am now committed to paying attention to how I actually feel inside and using that innate etheric guidance system. I'm now sensitive to and aware of digital screen manipulation of my attention, precious time and energy. I go out of my way to detach from being sucked into it all, I'm not living my life on digital call 24/7. It's approaching a digital black vortex of precious time, energy and attention.
I might start writing more about this topic in the days ahead just to clarify my thoughts about it. It's fascinating what's going on right now with information flow, human brains, cognitive sciences and cognition itself, mass delusion, loss of agreed upon societal reference anchor points, and so on,
I'm currently quite taken up with the writings of Daniel Kahneman, Stuart Wilde (his audio books are just unbelievable- what a character he was!), Alan Watts, Yuval Noah Harrari, Louise Hay, Eckhart Tolle, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Sir David Hawkins and increasingly am seeing the world through their ideas, observations and insights. I believe Albert Einstein had it right when he basically flat out said -energy vibrations are the key to understanding the Universe (and therefore how it works in relationship to yourself and those around you). It appears that what many people overlook today or are seemingly unaware of is how significant and profound this simple fact is.
My basic life and business approach is to treat everyone I meet kindly and with respect, like potential life-time connections.
Everything I handle is printed long ago (virtually always over 50 years old), primarily on paper by hand, mostly in loose single sheet format or as books, ephemera, etc. This thoughtfully and deliberately curated range of antique and vintage items possess fairly obvious historical, aesthetic and/or monetary value, and here-in lies their modern appeal for all of us.
I stand behind everything I sell and offer an Unconditional Satisfaction Guaranteed 30-day Returns. Authenticity of everything I offer is unconditionally guaranteed for life to be as described, you will never buy "fakes" or reproductions from me of any kind, period.
My reliable positive digital rare book dealer reputation is verifiable by my membership in IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers Association)- you are dealing with a real person who cares about the world and their customers- whoever they are, wherever they are in the world. IOBA actively screens it's members, so no deadbeats or cheats allowed.
Once you buy something from me and it's been shipped (Mon- Friday) with visible online tracking, I'm always on your side. In the end, I want you to be happy. Your satisfaction is the natural and typical end result of the whole endeavor. My end hope with every transaction is you'll be satisfied and return in the future for more commerce.
For the historical record, I'll confess that I love what I do and would do it for free. In fact, when I started I was widely told that is exactly what would happen. Thank god I believed in myself and didn't listen to popular wisdom. Most people have no idea what they're talking about, and so any perception they have is entirely subjective and mostly imaginary. We see what we think and believe, what we focus on manifests as our reality. (See my warning above).
I enjoy seeing items endlessly flowing past me which often also means on their way to you, and I truly want you to enjoy owning whatever you buy from me! Old items possess something special and different, everything here is historically interesting. Think of it as a digital historical museum where all the actual real objects are truly for sale and can be yours. All it takes is money, which is nothing more than a form of stored energy. Money is not actually real, you know that, right? All you have to do is trade invisible digital credits to get the physical object you see on your screen. What could be better than that?
Peace, namaste and kind regards,
Brian DiMambro, Antiquarian Dealer & Collector.
Dover, New Hampshire, USA.