14 March 2001

Life Beyond Amazon? There's a lot of books fall into the out of print and hard to find category, that Amazon (and Barnes and Noble?) can only get you through a special program. The one time I tried this on Amazon, it was expensive and slow. I have heard both Advanced Book Exchange and Alibris highly recomended, although I never got around to trying them myself. These are services that represent thousands of independant bookshops. I searched for the Alan Clark Diaries on both sites (more on Clark in a mo'). A large pinch of salt for the smallish sample size (one) , but ABE seemed to come out ahead. They generated double the number of booksellers carrying the book, the books were quite a bit cheaper on average, and there were sellers in the UK, Australia and South Africa, as well as in the US. Anyone who's used the services please post and let us know if it worked for you. I will of course try them myself. Alan Clark This guy was a minister in Margaret Thatcher's government. An extraordinay character, by all accounts. Of the diaries: Alan Clark, son of Kenneth ("Civilisation"), longtime Tory MP, unrepetentant womanizer and unapologetic aristocrat, delivers a candid and wickedly funny insider's account of the Thatcher reign, and England in the eighties. His indiscreet diaries give ample testimony to the egotism and insecurity of political life. (Publishers Synopsis) And: The most compelling account of modern politics I have ever read. Robert Harris, Independent on Sunday 1:16:55 PM