After Hours at Dooryard Books

A hell of a lot of people manage to spend years of their lives collecting books without noticing that most books aren’t particularly valuable, and virtually anything you do to them is only going to make them worth even less.

Patrick’s lost count of the number of people who’ve told him about the whole room they have—on the Upper West Side, in Ossining, at their summer house on the Cape—that’s filled with books.

Patrick could tell them that he, too, has rooms full of books and it’s not like people are beating down the door to pay a fortune for most of them.

Still, he humors collectors, at least those within a subway ride, because book people don’t usually consider parting with their collections unless they’re hard up for either money or space.