Lessons from the Book Fair

I just typed that title and flashed back to book fairs at school when I was a kid, when I'd end up with a handful of Scholastic paperbacks, and while those are fairly fond memories, that isn't what I did today. In fact, I'm not sure how those in charge of the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair would feel about the comparison, though one hopes they wouldn't mind.

Yup, I went into the city today. A small group was organized by the UMass Amherst Friends of the Library*, and I thought it sounded like an interesting time. Which it was! They had someone give us a little talk about the fair and book collecting generally, then handed out passes and away I went. It took me 2 hours to walk through, and that was by no means looking at every book.

*"Nobody ever graduated from a library. Nobody ever graduated without one."

I did look at most of the booths, though, and it was very entertaining. The first thing I learned was that some of the dealers come from much farther away than I realized: there were several from London, for instance. And all over the US, too. It isn't that I thought it was all Boston dealers (there is that International in the title), but still, the idea of them packing boxes of books to cross the Atlantic with, whew.

Other points of interest:

• unusual titles included How They Carried the Mail and The One-Eyed Poacher and the Maine Woods
• an Indian edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that had a note on the back: "Copy Right in India" (sic!)
• Winnie the Pooh in Russian for $100.00
  

Since when I go into your average used (not antiquarian) bookstore, I find that their idea of old is about five years ago, it was a treat to see actual old books. Not all were older than I am, but many were. And I saw a few books from my childhood, including Hilary Knight's Christmas Nutshell Library--for $300.00. Granted, it was in better shape than mine: in my set, the box edges are frayed and one of the four little books has no dust jacket (not that I care). It was strange to see it looking so new. And I saw a first edition of Eloise at Christmastime, though I didn't note the price (probably $100, it seemed that half the books I picked up were priced at that), lacking the interpretive little-girl-coloring-over-pages effect that my own copy has.

The absolute strangest thing I saw was a case of 50 artificial human eyes, in various sizes and colors, which apparently were used to fit people for artificial eyes. The only connection that I can see between that and books is that it's hard to read books with an artificial eye, and that's one tenuous connection. (Challenge: can you do better?)

The set of eyes cost $6500.00, by the way, which is exactly one-tenth the cost of the most expensive book I saw. I'm not saying it was the most expensive book there, either, I'm sure it wasn't, but there was a copy of Faulkner's Mosquitoes that cost $65,000.00 (sixty-five thousand dollars!), I can't even think why, or who, or what the...!

In closing, I give you a few photos I took today. I didn't take any in the Fair, since I wasn't entirely sure it would be allowed, or at least welcomed. However, as I headed for home, I caught this unusual city architecture shot:


And after I got home, I caught the dynamic duo in one of the classic poses:


I call this "I sleep next to my brother because he is in the spot I want to sleep in."