When I was Puerto Rican kid and obsessively devoted to my collection of science-fiction novels, I would create paper bookplates with my personal details along with drawings of zooming spaceships, planetary panoramas and the like.
I carefully attached the ex libris slips to the insides of the books’ front covers, and I felt a swelling of geeky pride at having enhanced my beloved library so.
I had forgotten all about the bookplates until, to my shock, I found myself staring at one of them this week … in a tweet.
The sender, Jay Gabler, is a fellow journalist who also works in downtown St. Paul (he’s at Minnesota Public Radio, just a couple of blocks from the Pioneer Press).
@ojezap Was this Isaac Asimov book yours? pic.twitter.com/l1UqAcjO3r
— Jay Gabler (@JayGabler) April 20, 2015
Holy. Fucking. Crap.
Jay said he bought the novel “The Currents of Space” at a St. Paul used-book shop in or around 1990 during “a serious Isaac Asimov kick.”
He adds in a blog post:
I recently decided to reread my Asimov novels — and when I opened this book for the first time in about 25 years, I saw a name that suddenly had meaning to me. A little Googling revealed that Pioneer Press technology writer Julio Ojeda-Zapata was raised in Puerto Rico, and a quick tweet proved that, sure enough, he had been this copy’s previous owner.
I have no idea how the book ended up in that book shop. I would never have willingly parted with a book by Isaac Asimov, who I worshipped as a child and a teenager, and mourned as if he were a loved one when he passed in 1992.
It’s unlikely the book made an epic trek from San Juan to St. Paul (but that would be cool). And how would it have left my possession in the first place?
Likelier, I accidentally included it in a pile of cast-off volumes I must have sold to the store sometime after I moved to the Twin Cities in the late 1980s.
In any event, I wanted the novel back:
@JayGabler Holy shit, where did you find that? And can I get it back? — Julio Ojeda-Zapata (@ojezap) April 20, 2015
Jay was happy to oblige:
@ojezap Sure! I bought it at Half-Price Books in about 1990, and I’m reading it for the second time. HMU at jaygabler@gmail. — Jay Gabler (@JayGabler) April 20, 2015
I met Jay today, reclaimed my treasured volume, and bought my benefactor a yogurt parfait as a gesture of gratitude.
Reunited: @ojezap and his long-lost Asimov novel, which I bought at a used bookstore in 1990. http://t.co/8Glp3r1LBY pic.twitter.com/ccU2WhuVo5 — Jay Gabler (@JayGabler) April 20, 2015
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