Wednesday night was the quarterly board meeting for the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society (NOBS), an event I always anticipate with much pleasure. This time, however, we ran into a roadblock, as it was also the night of a large AAUW sale which was not good last year, but nonetheless called to me this time like the scent of black licorice. (Yes, I know -- black licorice is odd, but to me its ambrosia of the candy gods. So just go with it.) Booksellers develop odd superstitions about sales based on the distant past rather than on the present and that’s how it is for me with this particular sale. ONE time, three years ago, the book gods smiled benignly there as I gathered up several excellent fishing titles, including a very rare one, several fashion catalogs from the ‘20’s, and any number of other very fine things. The year after was good, but not great, and last year, could only be called pathetic. And yet for a week the dilemma raged – which event should we go to?
Acquisition being what it is right now you’d think it would be a no-brainer, but I still retain a modicum of Catholic girl guilt, even though I haven’t been a Catholic (or a girl) for at least 30 years. Besides, I really WANTED to go to NOBS. So I balanced it on the scales and NOBS won, not only because of a sense of responsibility, though that was definitely in there, but because it was a choice between mania or serenity. I could definitely use a little of the latter these days, so NOBS it was.
Not only did we get to go to Cleveland Heights, which I love, but we spent a peaceful and interesting evening in the rare company of booksellers who actually read books. I told them about my Mary Frances book and how quickly it sold and of course they all knew the book and reminisced about the many times they’d sold it over the years. I mentioned that I had seen the cooking and gardening titles from the series at Lillian’s auction in 2006, but wondered if there were any others. As it turns out, there are. I may never see them in this lifetime, but I’m delighted to know they exist and which ones they are. One of the long-time sellers also brought an aromatic bag filled with huge branches of fresh rosemary. Now, I ask you, would anyone gift you with rosemary at the book sale? I don’t think so.
But the big moment came when Andrea filled the top of the coffee table with flyers, both large and small, advertising the 29thannual Antiquarian Book Fair in April. The very sight of that orange-gold paper had me swinging off the edge of the full moon, not only because we did great there last year financially, but because I so loved everything about it. For two days I could pretend that there was no internet, no bad behavior at crowded book sales, no impersonal drop-shipping, no loss of autonomy. For two days I sold books – make that, hand-sold books -- talked to collectors, engaged in literary conversation, browsed other sellers offerings, and reminded myself that bookselling truly does have meaning in the 21st century.
Working alone, as so many of us do, can be lonely and demoralizing at times. As much as I am grateful to be working with books there are days when I ask myself why in today’s crazy, mixed-up, technology-driven world I even bother swimming against the tide. Most of the time I have to admit that it’s probably because, as Louisa May Alcott once said, “She’s too fond of books and it’s addled her brain!”
But then I go to NOBS and come back rejuvenated, anxious to swim even harder against the technological tide. For that alone, Wednesday’s meeting was worth the loss of a book sale.
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