Bookseller Profile

Abebooks' uniqueness is our network of independent booksellers who work with us to provide the most diverse selection of rare, used and out-of-print books on the Internet. Take a moment and meet our member booksellers from around the globe. It is these sellers, with their experience, commitment and love of the used and out-of-print book business who help all our buyers find that treasure they've been looking for.

Armadillo Books

We first put out our shingle as a used, rare, and out-of-print book dealer and appraiser in 1988, under the name "Triduum Books and Appraisals." After concentrating on the history of the American South in graduate school and writing a thesis on New Orleans' black communities of the 1890s, it seemed natural to specialize as a dealer in the history of the South, the Civil War, and Southern literature. As a native of Louisiana and a resident of North Carolina, I understood some things about the South, its history and culture on a personal level. (In the ensuing decade we've expanded into many other subject areas: art history, Asian studies, religion and spirituality, history and photography, to name a few.)

One might say that I came to the book business honestly. My mother, a librarian for over fifty years, gave my siblings and I free run of the stacks at her library, and I don't think that we ever came home without at least one book from the library: a biography, a book about air and space, or one of the Tom Swift series. As a grade school kid I sometimes helped sort and file a few library catalog cards at home, and as a teen I worked for a summer in the State Library of Louisiana, moving and sorting shelves and shelves of books. I was an omnivorous reader as a child, and I recall awaiting the latest issues of National Geographic and National Geographic Explorer. While not a book collector as a youngster-it was so easy to check them out from "my" library-I was an avid collector of stamps from countries around the world.

After working for four years in the 1980s as a manuscript curator and part-time congressional archivist on Capitol Hill, I decided to take a leap of faith into entrepreneurship as a book dealer/appraiser. It was my hope that my background in books, manuscripts, and American history and my contacts with libraries and librarians in the southeastern United States would stand me in good stead. I opened Triduum Books as a mail-order business in the summer of 1988. The name "Triduum" befuddled clients on occasion. Some people thought the name was "Tritium" (a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used to increase the yield of hydrogen bombs) while others thought it was "Trillium" (a three-petaled flowering plant). Actually triduum is Latin for "a period of three days" or "a three day feast." (In Roman Catholic theology it is the name for the great feast of Easter.)

Like most booksellers of our generation we learned the business on our own, mostly by reading about the business and through the kindness of many of our fellow book dealers. A graduate school buddy of ours, David Holloway of David Holloway Books in Springfield, Virginia, was particularly encouraging, as were several dealers in our adopted home of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

We found books to buy through the well-trod routes of the trade, and over the next decade slowly expanded our stock-at first primarily in the areas of Southern history, Civil War books, and Southern literature - and issued catalogues quarterly. Our book and manuscript appraisal business continued to grow as well. Over the years we've had the privilege of appraising book and/or manuscript collections for clients such as historian Shelby Foote and novelist Walker Percy.

Since we are a "by appointment only" bookseller, the advent of the Internet was a watershed moment for our business. No longer would we have to rely solely on catalogues mailed to a select list of collectors, libraries, and other institutional clients, wondering whether they would have any interest at all in the books that we had listed. Suddenly we had a window on the world and all manner of clients were knocking at our virtual door.In May 1998 we debuted on the Web and ABE with a new name, "Armadillo Books," fondly recalling those odd-looking "little armored things" from my childhood in south Louisiana. (Amazon Books and Aardvark Books were already taken, after all.)

Over the past two years, Armadillo Books has seen its book sales grow exponentially. Each month we sell dozens and dozens of books to individuals, libraries, and other institutions in North America, Europe, the Far East and Latin America. If you visit us here at Armadillo Books you'll find a constantly changing stock of new, nearly new, secondhand, used and rare books from leading scholarly, academic, and trade publishers in North America and the Anglo-American publishing world.

If you visit you'll also find a couple of our bookstore "pets." While we don't have a live armadillo around the office, we do have a fluffy plush one named "Armand." And since every self-respecting used bookseller needs a cat, we also have a beanie baby feline named "Comma" to keep Armand 'dillo company. (Why "Comma?" Do you remember the difference between a cat and a comma? Well, "a cat has claws at the ends of its paws, while a comma is a pause at the end of a clause.")

Why do we keep selling antiquarian books? We enjoy the intellectual diversity of the work. Almost every week a book we've never seen before comes across our desk, and our clients-who come from all walks of life-are always bringing unfamiliar books to our attention. Searching for secondhand books keeps us on top of much of contemporary thought, cultural concerns, and public policy issues. We genuinely enjoy helping both individual collectors and libraries build their collections. And we make a modest but comfortable living at something we enjoy doing - a blessing, indeed.

In the early 1980s I was moved by a delightful little book published by the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, called The Books That Made the Difference. Its authors, Gordon and Patricia Sabine, were astonished by the variety of books that had made a difference in people' lives. No one book emerged as a "best" for even five percent of the respondents, and almost no one named a bestselling book.

Over the years we've been gratified at the occasional chance to make a difference in our clients' lives by finding a book for them. In 1998 a customer from Sao Paulo, Brazil, found on the Internet that we had a copy of a beloved photography book about New York City. A previous copy ordered from the states had been damaged en route; in her broken English she e-mailed to say that "it seemed to had submerged into the sea." Fortunately this time the American and Brazilian postal services delivered our mint copy of the book to her intact. Some weeks later there was a message from her on our voice mail thanking us "for sending this wonderful book and touching my life."

And just a few months ago we received an e-mail from a World War II veteran in the Midwest who was searching for a catalogue on copper sculptures of Civil War soldiers issued by an Ohio foundry. His American Legion post was refurbishing a statue of a Union rifleman which had been ordered from the foundry by the local Grand Army of the Republic ladies in the 1920s. Luckily we found a copy of the catalogue from a bookselling colleague which included the exact same statue and mailed it forthwith to our client. A few days later an e-mail arrived saying, "THE book arrived today. Our sculpture is in it and we are happy. Thanks for everything!"

Mortimer Adler has said that "reading is the basic tool in the living of a good life." Over the last twelve years we've derived great pleasure from helping clients locate such tools for living. Just being around books and those who love books is not a bad life at all.

- Lynn Roundtree, Owner, Armadillo Books

The views of the author, expressed above, are not necessarily those of the Advanced Book Exchange