Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World's Rarest 78rpm Records

Even with a few tiny flaws, this is one of the best books I've read all year. Petrusich immerses herself in the weird, wild world of collectors of 78s (and you thought book collectors were an interesting bunch ...), digging into archives, listening to rare records in collectors' living rooms, pawing through flea-market detritus hoping to find a diamond in the rough. And she makes it great fun to ride along.

I will say, I found it very handy to have YouTube handy as I read, since there are many times when Petrusich goes into great detail about fascinating recordings and it's a real benefit to be able to pull them up and listen along (I know, I know, it's a totally different experience to hear the music on a turntable as compared to the show more speaker on an iPhone, but it's better than nothing).

There are a couple little missteps: a whole section in which the author learns to scuba dive so that she can search a stretch of the Milwaukee River in a very strange effort to possibly find fragments of discarded records there didn't work for me, and there were areas where I wished she had gone into more detail instead of taking what seemed like the easy way out. But for all that, this is a really neat look at a small community of dedicated and enthusiastic folks who are doing their part to preserve the cultural heritage which exists on these old 78s. show less

Do I have any interest in collecting 78 rpm records? NO

Is Amanda Petrusich such a good writer that I would read a book about that topic: YES

This is such an incredibly special book I have been delaying marking it as finished because I feel like I need a lot of time to write about it. This is a phenomenal, very human, very detailed detour into this world, but also serves as a roadmap into other similar worlds. It is as rich and detailed as a novel. You don't need to know anything about collecting records or 78s because Petrusich tells you everything you need to know, in language that is warm, plain and understandable. The best non-fiction books give you just enough information when you need it and let you navigate uncharted territory with the book as a map -- this is one of those. I would urge you to read this even if you think you don't care about record collecting, because show more it is absolutely fascinating.

Now, if you do care about music and record collecting, RUN, do not walk, to read this book. This isn't about glorifying a soon-to-be-lost way of doing things, it's just about documenting it, about getting it right.

I read the book in tiny chunks, marking and underlining and re-reading, usually late at night because I wanted time and quiet and I wanted to be able to savor it. I would look up the songs mentioned on Spotify (and they are gratefully ALL there), playing them on my phone as I read.

I am looking forward to reading it again and finding everything I missed. show less

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this book, but the tortured prose makes it obvious that the author writes for Pitchfork. The narrative was fascinating, but I would have enjoyed it more if it was a little less self-important.

As a collector, I can relate. The book's sections don't comprise some glorious unified whole, but I didn't much care. Ms. Petrusich has very interesting insights into the obsessive collector and on what lies behind the desire to collect. It was mostly a deep pleasure to read.

This is a very enjoyable read, and is interesting and accurate in the coverage of the collectors interviewed.. It focuses on the elite US blues collectors, those who generally follow the "Blues Mafia" conception of record collecting. Thus most jazz, hillbilly and other sub-collections are not represented, which is a shame. It also intimates that the flea market collector is the norm, giving the wrong picture of where these elites get their records. Going into the field to find that elusive blues record might be how most people start, and even attending record shows, generally results in w wide ranging collection in mostly average condition, the gems having long ago been captured. That scattershot approach is outdated now, though ebay show more lists them often. The problem with ebay is that it becomes a question of money instead of records, though almost all the music is widely available on line, on CDs, and on LPs already. So people are actually collecting the artifacts as much as the music, if not more so. Who can hope to own all the Skip James 78s? Unavailable at any price indeed.

Still, there is lots to learn and enjoy in the narrative. It's very well written, moves along so much quicker than normal blues writing, and puts some fun into the enterprise. It's even serious scholarship in the stories of the big collectors. It's thus valuable to the person who wants to, already does, or is interested in collecting records today. show less

4.5. Good synopsis of what drives 78 collectors. (YouTube is a great tool while reading this book. A song gets mentioned, you can pause and listen to get an idea.) Highly enjoyable.