Book lovers descend on Union Station

[Rare books, from E1] offered at an eye-watering $225,000.

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“For books printed in the last 30 years, there's Harry Potter, and then there’s everything else,” said Pasadena dealer Dan Whitmore. “It stands in a kind of a category of its own.” This particular copy is one of just 500 from the first hardcover printing in the U.K. Half of those went to libraries, Whitmore said, making them far less desirable to collectors. And then there are the typos: a duplicated “1 wand” on Page 51 and a misspelling on the back cover, where the title appears as “Philospher’s Stone.”

L.A.’s first-ever phonebook

On April 3, 1882, the city permitted the Los Angeles Telephone Co. to string lines within city limits.

A week later, L.A. printed its first phone book. Most early directories were tossed once a new one arrived, but Peter Harrington Rare Books has a rare surviving copy, titled “Los Angeles Telephone Book (1882),” priced around $13,000.

The single, folded sheet lists just 90 names, mostly businesses near historic downtown such as liveries, saloons, physicians, mills, druggists and the local undertaker. Included are instructions for calling the central office, along with oneand two-digit numbers for USC's first president, M.M. Bovard (dial “58”), and the Los Angeles Club (dial “38”).

Seen at auction only twice in modern records, the directory is a rare piece of early Californiana — as much a record of the city’s earliest telecommunications as a social snapshot of fin de siécle Los Angeles.

Celebrity letters — to a bookish cat

In the 1950s and ’60s, a literary-minded cat named Dr. Absalom Minola — writing via his “butler,” future UC Berkeley archivist Jim Kantor — began sending letters to authors, editors and public figures. The joke? No one knew they were corresponding with a feline. And they wrote back.