Books, Art, Life and A Cat

Facing the Music

2012-02-16T13:24:00.006-05:00

Excitement builds and work mounts as we move into the final weeks of preparations for the book fair. Last night we attended a board meeting to iron out all the details and gauge “the State of the Union.” I spent most of yesterday calling vendors and trying to find “hooks” with which to snag newspapers willing to run stories about them and their participation in the fair. It used to be much easier to do this, but as I may have mentioned, newspapers are shrinking while demand for space remains high. So far, one is looking like a go and I did an interview with a new shop I’m rather crazy about, so that should be fun and maybe even easy to pitch with a press release. I also landed a feature story about us – which makes me a little uncomfortable because this isn’t about us – but I am the only dealer from Medina and the local paper gave us a green light ONLY if the story featured a bookseller. I’m not writing it – the incomparable Judy Totts is doing those honors. If I could pick any working journalist in the whole state of Ohio to write this it would be Judy. So while I’m a little weird with it, I’m also excited to see what she will do. To understand this you have know that Judy was a former poet laureate of the state of Ohio and has won the Paul Laurence Dunbar Award, as well as many prizes for newspaper features.

You’d think, given all the stuff clamoring for my attention, I’d have the sense to stay home today (and not be blogging), but -- well, you know how that goes. I never seem to know when to say no.This morning we ran over to a small sale we’d avoided for two years and went back to last month. I knew there wasn’t a chance I’d be carrying out bags of awesome books as we once did there, but hope springs eternal. Of course hope met its match in the first five seconds and was roundly KO’d. I bought a couple insignificant titles for the mall (which better pick up soon because the weekend’s storm clobbered our sales) and loaded up probably fifteen nice nautical books for the store. For me it was pretty much a waste of time, but I have only myself to blame for that.

The big thing I need to do today is a chore I loathe and detest – buying needed items for the fair. Why I put this stuff off is beyond comprehension, but there you have it and now it’s like one giant order-fest from multiple vendors. I have to get cellophane bags for the ephemera from U-line; more mylar covers from Brodart and a couple scalpels (I meant SPATULAS! -- good grief!) because I can’t find either of mine and am going nuts without them; Japanese paper from Talas to repair a map I maybe shouldn’t touch, but am going to because I truly think I can do it; a pound of book deodorizer fro m Godsey's so I can bring a wonderful Cleveland ephemera item I got the last time I visited the singing auctioneer; and a musical mechanism from a musical mechanism store which I have to RE-find online because I didn’t have the sense God gave a gnat to stop and place the order when I found it initially.

I know you’re probably wondering why need a musical mechanism. Well, last spring I bought at auction the gorgeous 19th century photograph album featured in the photo at the top. The base is a music box which contains the original mechanism except that it’s been overwound and Eric couldn’t fix it. So what I want to do is get a new one and then package the old one so the buyer can have both. It’s also about half full of photographs, primarily of children – but not the same children. As you can see, there's a piece of ugly tape in the corner of one picture, but that too, will be fixed before the fair. Enjoy the cute pictures of some of the little people below. With any luck they all grew up to be old people.

Meanwhile I'll get down the stack of catalogs, figure out what I need, pick up the phone, and -- FINALLY-- face the music! .

Working My Way to the Book Fair

2012-02-13T15:01:00.001-05:00

The storm has passed and life returns to normal. Yesterday the streets were clear, but the wind was biting, so we holed up for the second day in a row. However, from this experience we have learned something very important about ourselves. Unless we become so feeble that we can’t lift a book with both hands we can NEVER retire. Settling into a life of leisure may be the American Retirement Dream, but it’s definitely not ours. We told ourselves we could do anything we wanted this weekend which sounded extremely good except that after we read a lot, watched a Netflix documentary called Craft In America (a PBS show we’d missed) and talked excitedly about it for half an hour we were flat out of fun things to occupy ourselves. So Eric cleaned the house and I worked listing books and figuring out what we will take to the upcoming book fair. Only then – only when the vacuum cleaner roared and my feet flew up and down the stairs a million times did the house begin to breathe again. Clearly, we do not do idleness well.

I don’t know whether this is a good thing or bad thing, but I lean sharply toward good for the simple reason that there is no line of demarcation between work and play for me. I love selling books, I love writing when I’m in “the zone”, and I love playing with my art papers. So it’s not surprising that in the end, this weekend was salvaged by the call of the books. At least for me anyway. As for Eric, he doesn’t love cleaning, but he doesn’t hate it either, so for him there was a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment which is much better than frittering away time doing nothing. See what I mean? We lack the relaxing gene. My antiques dealer friend Darwin says he lacks it too and thinks we should probably buy a couple if they turn up on ebay!

Yesterday’s work also blessed me with a sense of peace and well-being regarding the upcoming antiquarian show. While I am certainly not bursting with books over here, I am not as bad off as I thought I was either. Over the past year I tucked away this book and that book and now all of a sudden there’s a small cache of real goodies including a signed copy of the Mark Twain biography written by his daughter, Clara; an 1895 Compleat Angler; an early Ray Vietzen archaeology (The Ancient Ohioans); an 1849 copy of John Quincy Adams’ Letters to his Son (religious); and an 1812 copy of Washington’s Final Address. I also have a ton of first edition novels by the French mystery writer Georges Simenon, an impressive array of Easton Press titles from the 70’s that have never been read, a nice collection of pop-up books and specialty vintage kid books, that rare little baseball book I showed you not long ago, those 16th and 17th century vellum documents from England, a rare map (we'll talk about it later), and boxes and boxes of ephemera.

I also found something I got this past summer that confounded me then and confounds me now. It’s a book titled The Marrow of Astrology which was published in 1688. Truly, this is one of those books you could easily pass by without even a glance due to the fact that it was rebound cheaply and plainly in 1906. We know this because the daughter of the former owner wrote it at the top of the foreword of the text. Both the title page and copyright page are missing, but the book is actually two books in one and the second part clearly shows the title. Of course the pages are very delicate, but can be carefully read, though you do have to decipher ye olde English. What I love most about it is a section where the author numbered his many points on a topic and got all the way to thirteenthly!

Handwritten notes and marginalia to the original text can be a sticky wicket, but I suspect in this case it may depend greatly on the sensibilities of the buyer, as they date from 1906. The tricky part of this book is pricing it. One lone copy exists on ABE owned by a British dealer who is asking $1300. His has been rebound also, but in calf, and is not missing the two pages as mine is. But then again, that makes mine the bargain copy -- which in a way is good, but in another way is the problem. The cheap binding and missing pages are egregious faults which devalue it by a good bit. But what is “a good bit”? There’s where it gets tricky.

I need to do some research on it, as well as on the 1812 Washington’s Final Address. As for the John Quincy Adams book of letters to his son – it looks like that one will be skipping the fair this year after all. I listed it on ABE yesterday because I couldn’t believe anyone at the fair would pay a three-figure price tag for a little book that measures 3"x4-1/2" and is not a first edition. JQ Adams died in 1848, the year the book was published and my copy dates from 1849. But it looks like I might have been wrong because it sold on ABE as I was writing this.

A "Gran"d Disappointment

2012-02-11T11:56:00.012-05:00

If life were fair we’d be well on our way to Michigan this weekend in time for lunch at one of our favorite Ann Arbor eateries – the Cottage Inn. We first discovered this gem back in the late 90’s when Moira and Brian were undergrads at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. In those days there were two Cottage Inns, the main one in Ann Arbor and a secondary one in Ypsi conveniently located on Washtenaw, the main drag, not far from campus. Oh, the delightful hours spent there over plates of pasta pignoli after basketball games when Earl Boykins, the turbo-charged 5’3” star from Cleveland (second shortest player in the NBA after Muggsy Bogues) , cleaned house with whomever came calling. Wine poured, glasses clinked, and you waited for a table however long it took. But then a decade later the world changed somehow and that was the end of the Ypsi Cottage Inn, as well as the end of an era.

I could write a whole blog about this, but it’s really not the point, nor is Earl Boykins the point, though I still have a major crush on Earl Boykins even now. The point is that it looks like we woke up this morning encased in a snow globe. The wind’s howling, the white stuff’s blowing, and the temperature hovers ten degrees south of miserable. We called the kids at eight-thirty to say we’re still hoping to show up, but now I’m beginning to wonder if desire trumped reality here. It’s ten-thirty and it’s still not pretty out there. Well, it IS pretty actually, but pretty isn’t the point either.

The point is we want to see the little guys for Valentine’s Day. I have their cards and presents wrapped and even hand-decorated the gift bags. Tyler at eight gets candy and a Target gift card, the latter because he told me over one of our 6 a.m. breakfasts-for-two to please, please, PLEEEEEEEASE never, ever, EVER give him money.

“If you do, Gran, my mom and dad will make me put some in the bank. If you get a gift card they can’t.” Micro-Economics 101 delivered with a grin! Of course I pinky-swore on the spot that I wouldn’ even consider cash and, in fact, if necessary, would walk to Target in a blizzard to avoid it. If you don’t already know this, involvement in conspiracies is one of the major perks of grannyhood!

Two year old Dylan gets a little panda and a pop-up book. Right now small stuffed animals – he calls them “the babies” – and board books are an obsession. So I think Gran and Papa scored big on those. The funny part is he calls us both Papa. ALL the oldies are Papas.

Anyway, getting back to the weather, it’s so miserable I didn’t even wrap orders this morning, but that might have been an excuse too since the post office branch at the grocery store is only a mile up Rte. 18 which is reasonably clear -- at least I think it might be. All I know is that for one rare day I have actually traded my bookseller hat in for my granny hat. Though of course I never actually wear a hat because I’d rather freeze than get hat-hair.

Vanity, thy name is GRAN.

P.S. Eric just returned from a trial run down Rte. 18 to Interstate 71 to Rte. 3. The verdict, he informs me, is as clear as the icicles hanging off the gutters on the screened porch– no way, Jose!

P.S. Again -- Wow! I'm over 10,000 page views! Amazing. I actually stuck with the second incarnation of this blog. Maybe that novel could happen yet. :-)

Random Acts of Blogging

2012-02-07T13:54:00.000-05:00

Well, I did it. It took me all day and I waited until the last possible moment, but I finally stopped avoiding the novel and opened chapter one. For a few seconds I panicked because the other chapters were labeled by number, but for some unknown reason Chapter 1 had its own unique name. It’s amazing I ever found it given what I’d slugged it. Fortunately, or otherwise, I unearthed it fifteen minutes before my older daughter’s daily five o-clock check-in which gave me just enough time to read the whole thing before the phone rang. Did I love it? No. Did I hate it? No. I guess you could say it’s the battlefield and I’m Switzerland.

Of course today I have no choice but to dive in and keep on treading water. It looks like there are five chapters finished, though one is slugged Chapter Five and another Chapter Five1 which means that I must have done some radical rewriting at some point. We’ll see. I remember having a blast working on it, so I’m hoping a spark will ignite somewhere along the line so I can at least finish the first draft. I have a long history of abandoning stories – a loooooooooooooong history. In fact, I mentioned the novel on Facebook this morning and an old friend who is also a writer asked me which novel I meant! My reputation clearly precedes me. The only reason I ever finished the books I published was the fact that I was under contract.

Anyway, that’s on the agenda today, but so is pulling together my final sales figures and expenses so we can file our federal income tax return. Fortunately, this is not the trauma of the dreaded Ohio sales tax because there’s no computer involved and we have an accountant who turns what I give her into an official document. I love accountants – wouldn’t want to marry one – but they do make life easier.

We were supposed to go to an auction tomorrow, but I think we’re not now because they never posted any pictures at ALL, much less of the books. It’s too far to take a chance on finding nothing but mildewed, broken down, used up, very bad books. But it’s certainly not a good thing because we went nowhere last weekend and consequently didn’t buy any books at all. Even ebay failed me this week. I saw one good one I’d sold twice in the $60 range, the last time about a year ago, but when I checked its current price it had somehow plummeted to $12! Amazing. But then the other day I also listed a book and everyone was tightly clustered in the $55-65 bracket except for one seller who came in at $22! I ignored him completely, but I do so wish dealers could somehow reach a consensus that books are not pork bellies. But of course that’s not going to happen.

The problem is that it’s not even just online books I need. My mall stash isn’t looking all that great either and now some very obvious space opened up over there due to yesterday’s sale of that giant dictionary I showed you some time ago after we came back from Dayton in November. The same person who bought it also bought a big Bible, so there’s yet another gaping gap to fill. You know you’ve got a problem when a collective twenty inches of open space is enough to poise you on the edge of panic. It’s astounding to me that we continue to have an ongoing acquisition problem when for years we dealt with a surfeit of books! But there you have it.

Oh, one interesting thing did happen though. Last week I sent out a program idea to the Summit County Library system in hopes of giving a talk on collecting books in the digital age and yesterday landed myself a gig. ! wish it could be before the antiquarian show, but no such luck, as libraries seem to require a long lead-time. I had my choice of multiple days throughout the summer, so I called and locked in a date for mid-July. I don’t view this as a business promotion at all – at least not for me individually – it’s more of a volunteer effort for NOBS and a chance to remind people that e-readers do not negate the pleasure of the physical book. I think as “book people” we can’t afford to sit back in silence on this issue if we wish to see books (and our businesses) thrive. I haven’t done any programming for a long time, though I used to do a storytelling workshop and give talks about my books, so I’m not worried about it. In fact, I hope some more pop up.

So there you have the sum total of what's happening here in my small corner of Medina today. Only now I see that I have created a brand NEW problem for myself. I have not mentioned a single thing that can be photographed. But here’s a photo of random books waiting to be listed. Okay, that's probably reaching, but if you think about it it does makes a modicum of sense. Random books for a post about random stuff!

True To Type

2012-02-06T13:55:00.008-05:00

I was talking to my writer friend Laurie on the phone this morning and she asked me if I knew about the latest craze in collectibles. I told her I guess I hadn’t, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t books. She agreed that it wasn’t, but said that it was something very surprising. Yesterday morning she’d been flipping through the TV channels and chanced on a segment about the typewriter craze that has young people conducting something called “Type-Ins” in coffee shops all over the country. Having never observed such an event , my mind immediately rummaged through my 60’s box and pulled out a Love-In replete with, beads, Baez, reefer -- and typewriters.

“The night, they drove old Dixie down, and all the people were singing! They sang ………”

Claaaaaaaaaaaack, clackety-clack, clack, clack, clack!

Groovy! Except I’m a day late and a dollar short on this one, as the New York Times reported this story last year which means it could be “soooooooo 2011” by now. But I just did a quick Google search which proved it to be hanging in there, though not quite as I’d envisioned. Type-ins are serious events with speed competitions involved -- there's nothing mellow-yellow about them. I bring them up for several reasons not the least of which is the solace of knowing that even if books totally fall out of favor odds are they’ll spring back in another generation or two. Not that that will do most of US any good, but it’s comforting to at least be reminded that all things old are new again.

But the real reason I bring them up is that today is D-Day – Drag-Out-the-Novel-I-Began-Two-Years-Ago Day so I can bring a manuscript with NEW writing to next month’s writers’ group. Contrary to what you’ve observed here about my writers’ group, writers’ groups are not really about presents, pinot grigio, Darwin Cake and Christmas ferns. Those thing are supposed to be treats, little PAY-OFFS for showing up faithfully with a manuscript every single month, pages clutched in sweaty hands prepared to read and hear the verdict from your fellow writers. Our group used to function that way too, but then Nancy landed a newspaper editorship and then later a PR job which requires writing and I became a bookseller who wrote on the side and then, later yet, an obsessed bookseller who never writes. Meanwhile the other two members, Laurie and Dandi, remained dedicated authors who have finally decided to stop giving me and Nancy a pass. At one time this blog counted as writing , but no longer. The blog is fine, but the blog is NOT a novel, however much I add dialogue, description, and other writerly embellishments to impress them. They’re over it.

So today I absolutely, positively HAVE TO seriously read the completed four or five chapters (I forget which it is) of the novel tentatively known as Genre Friction and see what they sound like. And then remind myself that the whole thing is a draft, just a draft, and move forward with a new chapter by the first week in MARCH. The thing is I’m afraid to look. I really am. You’d think we were talking about a huge black, hairy spider hiding in a corner of the basement I’m so freaked. Is it any wonder I’ve started engaging in magical thinking?
In case you’ve never tried it here’s how magical thinking works: if I still had my old manual typewriter it would be okay. Better than okay. I won prizes on that typewriter. I typed better on it than I do on a computer. And the sound! Oh, the sound! I roared down that keyboard using just the middle fingers of both hands like Wonder Woman on speed. In fact, I worked beside the ad guy at the newspaper office for a year and a half before he realized I didn’t even know HOW to type. That typewriter was me and I was it – a perfect symbiotic relationship.

And this is TRUE. It is! So why does Eric feel obliged to remind me that every time I made a mistake on the typewriter there was White-Out involved? And that when enough White-out splattered on the page I had to retype the entire thing. And revision. Revision was torture. Revision was the equivalent of having your fingernails ripped out by the Inquisition. Then there was the fact that I couldn’t even pick UP that clunky old black behemoth of a Remington manual (bet I could now though). And the fact that sometimes its platen held pages every bit as blank and accusing as any computer screen

True, all true! But stop already!

I get it.

The hairy black metaphorical spider stays in the basement because to suck him up with the central vac I'd really have to look at him. And the typewriter looks good because it’s gone. And I am writing about typewriters so I don’t have to read -- much less write -- the novel.

After the Party ...

2012-02-03T14:27:00.005-05:00

I was so anxious to post yesterday, but never got a chance due to the weirdest situation. I was down the basement preparing the week’s books to be hauled to the antiques mall which I often do on Thursdays. More than an hour slid by before I went back upstairs to the computer. By then a ton of emails crowded my inbox – everything from orders to not exactly junk, but not exactly top priority either. Feeling rushed to get over here, I zoomed in immediately on the orders of which there were three. Order one was from Alibris for The Book of the Unimat. Nancy thinks that one ought to have been written by a Tibetan monk, though the subtitle – “Including SL and Mk3 A Guide to Its Operation, Accessories, and Possibilities Aimed Primarily at the User as a First Timer” resoundingly squelches any notion of peace and meditation. It’s about machining (another of those technical things I like) and is not exactly a New York Times bestseller. I got it with a large book collection from a guy in Mt. Gilead, Ohio three year ago, so an order was enough to inspire some subdued whirling and twirling.

Order two came from biblio – a nice normal book about musical chords. Again, no stress, so on to order three which came from Abe. You will NOT believe this. I did not believe this! The book requested was – ta da! -- The Book of the Unimat; Including SL and MK3 A Guide to Its Operation, Accessories, and Possibilities Aimed Primarily at the User as a First Timer. I would guess maybe four people in the entire universe would want such a thing, especially at $45, and yet two of them showed up in my inbox ten minutes apart. Because orders are backwards when you read them (that is, the first one to arrive is the last one you see) the ABE customer should have been the winner, but wasn’t because I processed the alibris order as soon as I saw it. I mean, really – what were the ODDS of two takers after three years?

My fulfillment rate at ABE is -- make that WAS -- 99 per cent and I’d been shooting for a perfect hundred until Unimat singlehandedly took care of THAT. Silll I was more than ready to move on, so for a whole five seconds I did just that – until up pops another ABE order. This time it’s for a Cessna plane manual.These I’m not so crazy about, but I have a whole stack, thanks to the Late Great Elmer about whom I have written many times here. I’d have bet the extra copy of that cool Missouri history and genealogy I got Sunday that I had it, as it had been a long time since I sold one. But It wasn’t in the box with the rest of them. It wasn’t shelved with either the technical books or what’s left of Elmer’s aviation stuff. I searched business ephemera. I searched how-to. I was so desperate I even searched catalogs and science. Two hours later I still had no Cessna manual from 1965. I decided to let the order sit and give it another go in the morning after I got back from the mall. But while I was AT the mall I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look around on the half chance that -- GOT IT!!!! Oh, the relief! The joy! The whirling and twirling!

Anyway, here I finally am, neither jangly and twitterpated, or whirling and twirling, and what do I do? Instead of telling you about the Christmas/Edgar Nomination/Hallmark Movie party I fixate on my neuroses. But here’s the thing. The party was wonderful. We opened our presents beside the Christmas fern, toasted our rising star Dandi with pinot grigio (she’s next to me in the photo above and I’m the one with the light emanating from her ear), had dinner, ate Darwin Cake, laughed a lot, and most importantly, made a hard, fast commitment to return to the old days when we met every single month and EVERYBODY showed up with a manuscript to read.

Everybody.
Non-negotiable.
Uh-oh.

Obsessed With Books

2012-02-01T10:05:00.002-05:00

Tonight is our THIRD attempt at the writers’ group Christmas/Edgar nomination party, so fingers crossed. I am about to bake my THIRD Darwin Cake which better be the last one because I can actually do it without the recipe now which is pretty scary! It’s funny -- I used to be so domestic, but these days I consider myself a goddess for successfully getting dinner on the table. It reminds me of that old Louisa May Alcott quote – “She is too fond of books and it has addled her brain.”

Truly, there are so many ways that bookselling has changed me. My house used to be clean all the time even with little kids strewing toys all over the place. I baked my own bread, made homemade granola, and sent lunches off to school with bean sprouts on the sandwiches which of course were made from the homemade whole wheat bread. Even when I spent crazy hours working as Director of Sales and Marketing for the nursing home I did better than this, at least on the weekends, or when asked to bring something to an event. Chocolate raspberry cheesecake, homemade chicken soup, orange chicken with black olives …Oh well. That was then and this is now and nobody’s starving over here.

But there are other ways that bookselling has impacted my life that may not be dismissed so easily. For example, I read less and keep crazy hours. I used to read more and keep crazy hours, only in reverse. In those days I’d sit up half the night lost in a novel while these days I read in snatches, fall asleep by nine most nights, and get up every morning between four and five a.m. I also used to volunteer for causes – the Farmer’s Market at the Episcopal church; the Christmas basket program at same; was president of the local adoption group; served as the Ohio contact for international adoptions; worked the phones at Help Line, a call-in crisis center; ran storytelling groups; even had two foster children, both of whom were pregnant when we got them. Now? Now I show up one day a year at the community center for Christmas and volunteer as a board member and book fair committee member for NOBs, though I’m not sure NOBS counts, as it’s part of my obsession.

When I first began as a bookseller I was also writing professionally. In fact, most of the books I wrote I wrote while I was selling books. In those days I identified myself as a writer who sold books part-time. Now I’m an obsessed bookseller who thinks about maybe writing again, but thus far has yet to add one sentence to the novel begun a year or two ago, despite the pile of writers’ magazines Eric supplied for Christmas. I have a hunch this will be discussed tonight and I will feel a.) guilty and b.) motivated to change it. But then I will get back to real life and one of two things will happen. If sales are good I’ll be flying high trying to make them even better. If they’re not I will be a fanatical crazy woman who will have to pried away from the computer until things turn around.

So how did this happen to me? I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s a combination of things. All my life I have loved books best, so that’s pretty much a given, but as I gradually changed from being a commodity seller to a seller of older and antiquarian books and paper my interest deepened and I began to view bookselling as a serious time-honored profession in which I needed to prove myself as a serious player. Of course this also explains my craziness with scanning, book sites which seek to diminish one’s independence, bad bookseller behavior, bad listings which provide no information, and an obvious lack of pride and scholarship evidenced by the sad majority of the bookselling community as a whole. The fact that I work from a home office, even to supply the antiques mall, also adds to the whole sturm und drang because I never get away from it. Even when we go to Michigan for the occasional weekend I drag it along in my head like an extra piece of overweight luggage.

So what to do? Now there you have me. I have no idea. All I can do is hope the Muse will soon come calling again. Maybe I could leave her a piece of Darwin Cake … You think?

Mirror Incidents

2012-01-30T12:43:00.003-05:00

It’s fascinating how many connections can be drawn between bookselling and life. One showed up yesterday and I’m still chuckling over it. Eric and I had passed on an estate sale Saturday because in the ad the company had stuck the crucial word books next to the lethal word toys, minus the important word VINTAGE. But my antiques dealer buddy Darwin sent me a note Saturday afternoon to say that they had a lot of books and people were walking around with four or five each. He couldn’t guarantee their quality, but just wanted to give me the heads up. So yesterday we dutifully piled into the car and headed off to Akron for half price day. At first glance the shelves looked grimmer than the Reaper himself which of course made me wonder how good the departed books had been. I gave what was left a desultory look and was just about to call it a day when I spotted what looked like a brown cardboard box on the coffee table.

I walked over to have a look only to find that it wasn’t a box at all. It was two seemingly new books in plain, but pristine, jackets the color of brown paper bags. I opened them (backwards and upside down) and found two identical Missouri history and genealogical titles published in 1959. Well, there’s a nice surprise, yes? Definitely, but it got even more surprising when an estate sale worker handed me a plastic bag and said, “Here – put those in there and fill it up for $5.”

Normally I’m not much of a bag day sort of girl, but I had seen some shiny new stuff I figured Eric could use for the store, so off I went, bag flying like a banner. Immediately an older title on the theory of solids (you know how I much I love that mysterious technical stuff) enthusiastically jumped in with the Missouri gang . And then a 1943 centennial history of a Catholic church in Philadelphia sailed in behind it. After that though it was strictly ISBNville, but never mind. By the time I got done my four books priced out at $170 and Eric’s four shiny new ones at $55. Not bad for a bad sale!

After that we were so pleased with ourselves we headed off to Home Goods to buy a mirror. Three years ago we remodeled the bathroom in the upstairs hall (which I immediately appropriated except for when the kids are here), but never got around to getting a new mirror for it because I couldn’t find anything I liked at the time. We had had one of those generic plain plate glass ones, so back up it went and there it has remained ever since. Oddly enough it seemed that the people of Akron must have been harboring similar mirror stories because as soon as we got out of the car we spotted a couple, a man, and a young woman each lugging a mirror to their cars.

“Maybe they’re having a sale,” Eric said.

They weren’t, but you’d sure never have guessed it. The fairly small mirror section looked like Filene’s basement at the annual bridal gown sale. We whipped out our tape measure, as did the ten or twelve other mirror buyers, and dug in. Finally I narrowed it down to three I liked, but when I couldn’t make a decision in two and a half seconds Eric drifted away. Naturally, that’s when a clutch of NEW mirror buyers showed up, pulled out their measuring tapes and joined the fray. What do I do? Get the contemporary one? Or the traditional one with the nice molding? Or the traditional one that can’t decide if it’s gold, silver or something in between Zap! The contemporary one is gone. So then – the traditional with the molding, or the traditional that can’t decide …

Zap! The traditional with the molding is gone too, so that leaves only the traditional silvery, goldy, something-elsey. I looked around for Eric, panic building like a tower of blocks, but he’d evaporated into thin air. There was no choice. I had to wrestle this enormous thing, darn near as tall I am, to the floor and then stand there hanging on to it until he showed up. Which he did. Eventually.

“Does this remind you of anything?” I asked mildly.

“Well, you didn’t seem ready to go, so I thought I’d look for a new pad for the rug.”

All that was visible of me was my head and my fingers clutching the frame on both sides. But slowly the light dawned.

“Oh! Sorry about that,” he mumbled, relieving me of the mirror. He picked it up like it was nothing more than a large newspaper and strode off toward the check-out leaving me to follow, bemused by the fact that he still hadn’t made the obvious connection.

I thought about mentioning that the reason I could even tussle with a mirror the size of an iceberg is because of the many times I’ve been backed into corners clutching piles of books as thick as the Manhattan telephone directory with no place to put them.

But I didn’t have to.

“Well, look at it this way, “ he said. “At least there weren’t any scanners.”

Snow Day?

2012-01-27T10:26:00.003-05:00

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Snow falls with serious intent in enormous flakes that remind me of the old grade school craft of folding white paper in complex configurations and snipping fanciful shapes from the edges in the futile hope of replicating nature. On the one hand it makes me want to declare a Snow Day. Remember snow days when you were a kid? My sister and I would jump out of bed, brave our unheated bedrooms, look outside at the eerie white expanse of Kenyon Street and run to the radio in hopes that WHLO Akron (Hello Radio) would save us from the endless monotony that was school in the 60’s. These days there’s nothing to be saved FROM – it’s more a matter of the snow channeling silent permission to break from routine and instead choose something I love almost as much but never have time to pursue. On the other hand though, the need to list, take pictures, cull dead stock, ACCOMPLISH something shrieks in my head like a siren

Cullng dead stock does please me though. Yesterday I removed most of my fiction, some of which has been online for 15 years. Yes, it sells occasionally, but I’m annoyed with a list that doesn’t in its entirety reflect what I’m about these days. I began in 1997 as a commodity bookseller as did most internet start-ups, but over the years my love of the new and shiny gave way to the call of the old, the pleasure of scholarship, the delight of paper in all its guises. In making this shift the world both expanded and contracted. While ABE grew for me, alibris narrowed down. I still sell there, but my enthusiasm for them has badly waned. I guess to explain that you would have to understand that to the core of my being I am fiercely independent. I could rant about all the things that drive me insane, but there’s little point. You either live with them. Or you don’t.

Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you about Wednesday’s auction, did I? I got surprisingly luckier than I imagined I would, but it dragged on endlessly and we had to leave no later than 6:30 to get back to Akron to the NOBS book fair committee meeting. Three and a half hours after start time they had so much stuff left it likely took another three hours to plow through it unless they piled it all up in crazy, unrelated lots and took whatever they could get just to be free of it. We stayed as long as we dared, but I ended up having to leave behind a box of ten pristine copies of the Ladies Home Journal from 1895, a golf book from the 1890’s, and a strange little book buried in a box of junk that I bet went for a song. I can’t remember the title, but I’ve sold it twice at $65. The first time I got it by chance and had no clue that it was a desirable antiquarian Jehovah’s Witness title until I researched it. Now I would recognize it anywhere, though I can’t even tell you what it’s about, much less name it. It’s very unique, that’s all I can say.

Anyway, on the plus side, I bought a flat of Canton, Ohio ephemera from the early 1900’s, primarily dealing with the assassination of President William McKinley who was from Canton where this auction was also held. In Canton they devour this stuff despite the fact that there’s enough of it there to go door to door and give every resident a piece of it. I also bought 67 holiday postcards, again from the early 1900’s, some of which are pictured below, AND a pretty little Catholic bridal prayer book made in Belgium which sports a sparkly celluoid cover that replicates mother of pearl. It still nestles in it original box and appears unused (1939) with no writing on the page designated for information on the wedding.

Yesterday's mail also brought me another ebay purchase of note. This one, The City of the Saints, dates from 1906 and celebrates the wonders of Salt Lake City, Utah. Unlike others of its ilk, it actually has 64 oversized pages loaded with real history and meaningful photographs. I’m very pleased with it. Since we last talked I also bought a two volume antiquarian set on a trip to Greece (1830’s as I recall) and another two volume set from the 1890’s about a woman traveler’s adventures on the Nile. Oddly, I harbor a fondness for vintage travel which is truly perverse seeing as how I’m not at all crazy about travel in real life. Anyway, I don't have them yet, so the outcomes remain to be seen.

Just this second I peeked behind the shade in my office to take a picture of Winter Wonderland only to find that the snow has vanished, replaced with the rain and mud seen above. I guess there’s no decision to be made after all. No snow day for me today!

But you know what? I suspect there wouldn’t have been anyway. When you love what you do you really don't need a Snow Day.

Boxed In and Heading Out

2012-01-25T08:43:00.005-05:00

It’s 6:30 a.m. and I am waiting for Eric to get up to help me finish the packaging of a set of six volumes off to Slovakia today. The postal rates just went up Monday, so the only way I can keep the cost down for this buyer is to use a crazy, weird 23” long box the postal service devised for international priority shipping of large items. We didn’t have one, so I had to have him pick one up yesterday on the way home to see if it would even work. As it turns out, it will with three packages of two volumes each laid flat inside and separated with packing. I have everything bubble wrapped, but this box seems flimsier to me than the regular priority boxes, so I want him to cut some cardboard to line it – sort of a box within a box. I would do it myself except the only cardboard I have that’s long enough is not lined so you can easily score it with a box cutter. No matter what I do I can NOT cut though this stuff! I know it sounds like overkill to even try, but this box costs an astonishing $61.00! Anyone willing to pay such a staggering sum to ship a $65 set of books deserves first class treatment.

Today, in fact, I have TWO sets to wrap, but the other one will be departing media mail to a town in Ohio. Even so, it will cost an astonishing $9.60. Every time the postal rates flip it seems to sound a death knell to our sales and yet buyers adjust. But I do believe that even though there are clear signs of adaptation there are also equal signs of resistance. Eventually, as the rates continue to shoot for the stratosphere, which they WILL, we might hit a brick wall on overseas orders. I was talking to a seller last fall at a book sale and he said he never gets European orders anymore. Obviously, I do, but they’re certainly not what they used to be.

Enough of that though. Today is a whirlwind, already gathering momentum. Once the mail is out I have to get books ready for the antiques mall, then drop them off, and head out to an auction. Though they’re advertising books,it looks like it’s more of a paper seller’s heaven, so I am hoping to at least acquire some of that. The last time I was at this auction (it’s been a long time – a year I think) I did great, but that’s not the usual course of events. People go bonkers here, especially with paper as many, if not most, of the buyers are collectors who will pay whatever it takes. I also can only stay three hours, as we have to get back to Akron by seven for the NOBs book fair committee meeting. By ten I should be a sleepwalker, as I got up at 4:30 this morning!

As I mentioned, I have been buying a lot of books on ebay these days. It’s a time consuming job with mixed results – many sellers don’t have a clue what to even TELL you about a book – but when it works it’s been known to send me whirling and twirling around my office. Yesterday, for example, I bought a $90 book on a Buy it Now for $24 with free shipping and a $200 book for $15.00 INCLUDING shipping, on auction. How I managed that last one I have no idea. I had a big bid hidden, as I was sure there were a couple lurkers ready to pounce in the last few minutes, but I guess they wandered off to dinner while I sat staring at the screen balancing a plate of tuna noodle casserole and spinach salad on my lap while Eric dined by himself at the kitchen island.

I promised to show you some of my recent ebay purchases, so check out my favorite below – a beautiful set by John Fiske from 1902 entitled Essays: Historical and Literary. A lot of people have cloth bound sets, but these are half leather with beautiful spines sporting raised bands, gilt top edges, marbled endpapers, and pages as white as snowdrifts. For these I paid $38.00, plus $4.00 shipping. Not only do they delight the eye, but I also rather like old Fiske for some odd reason. I remember once having had a four volume set of his magnum opus, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, which sought to reconcile orthodox religious beliefs with the Darwinian theory of evolution as filtered through the mind of Herbert Spencer, with whom he was most enamored. That was a long time ago though and this is the first Fiske I’ve even seen since then.

So now, having checked in with you guys and fulfilled my promise to play show and tell, I’m off to the basement to saw cardboard by myself. The only thing Eric appears interested in sawing is logs!

Out of the Ball Park

2012-01-21T13:50:00.009-05:00

As you may have seen in the Comments section of my last post, there was no rockin’ and rollin’ for me last night. A much ballyhooed winter storm alert shut down Party Central, so no Christmas and no champagne for Dandi’s big wins until a later date. Most likely it will be the week after next, as every one of us had a conflict on a different night of the upcoming week. For me it’s a NOB’s book fair committee meeting on Wednesday which I MUST go to since it’s almost countdown time to the book and paper fair in April. I’m excited because the first day of the fair falls on my birthday this year. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do to celebrate, that is if you even celebrate such a thing as turning ... yeah.

It’s funny what just popped into my head this second. Last week I read a short piece in the New Yorker in the Talk of the Town section about a bunch of serious book guys meeting at Bauman’s Rare Books in NYC. The writer commented that they were all dressed in “bibiliophile regalia” which consisted of grey sweaters and spectacles. Oh my. I am definitely not in gear here. As I think about the Akron book fair the male dealers seem to wear either sweaters or sport jackets, but I am drawing a complete blank on the women which is not a good sign. There are not that many of them, so you’d think I’d know, but I don’t. Now all of a sudden I have a hunch that I am a tad too frivolous, especially given the fact that two of the long time dealers we like once told me that when they first saw me they thought I’d be gone in a heartbeat because I looked so “girly-girl” which I think is a nice way of saying that I don’t look like I have a brain in my head, much less know anything about books. Hmmmmmm – this is worrisome. And like I need something else to obsess about right now.

It does of course bring up the question of whether it’s more important to look like you belong, or to be true to who you are. I can wear a serious gray sweater. And I can lose the dangly earrings and the high-heels. But should I? Is there some rule that says you can’t know stuff and still be fashionable? I’m not a fashionista for Pete’s sake. I just believe in lipstick, earrings and skinny jeans. Oh, I’m not going to think about this anymore. It’s freaking me out and I’m sorry I even remembered it.

I think the reason I did is because Bauman’s has been on my mind since yesterday when I dragged out a rare baseball book I got this past summer but never listed because I couldn’t satisfy myself as to why it was so expensive. I was at a NOBS board meeting this past Wednesday and Andrea and I got to talking about it and then Brian, the, NOBS PR guy, got in on it, and the ensuing discussion convinced me that it’s high time to list it. I looked online for like copies and found a beat-up example priced under $200 with most people in the $400-500 range for nicer ones. But a google search showed that Bauman’s Rare Books had it listed at $2000 and marked it SOLD. I forwarded the link to my bookseller friend Paul Bauer of Archer’s Books who wrote a baseball book and is a collector of same. He said he’d never seen it before (Bauman’s had a great photo), but that with baseball books age is paramount, so my 1910 copyright is a good thing. Also, the cartoons inside are rendered by C.A. Briggs who worked for newspapers in both Chicago and New York and was considered the best sports cartoonist of his day.

It’s interesting how we came to have this little treasure. Eric went out on a house call by himself back in the late summer or early fall AFTER a very respected long-time seller had already skimmed the cream off the top. He bought everything that was left, which included many very nice books that I could take to the antiques mall and sell in the $30-$50 range, which I did. The only wildly expensive one was this one, but what a little sleeper it is. I think maybe, given the rapidity of the sale of Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices, I will hold it back until after the show. It would be very nice to have something that maybe would create a little buzz. Last year I had only a three volume diary kept by an Ohio college girl at the turn of the 20th century replete with dance invitations and pictures of the sorority girls smoking, but I sold that before the show even began to my book guru. The first year though I brought the fabulous Salvador Dali Cookbook and a first edition Mark Twain. So I think I need this baseball book to hitch a ride over to the John S. Knight Center and get in on the action.

Especially if I can’t find a serious gray sweater between now and then.

Dandi News, Good News!

2012-01-20T10:05:00.004-05:00

I’ve been remiss here I know, but after all that computer trouble I had to catch up on listing, not to mention deal with all the photos in need of renaming and uploading. But I finally got a handle on it which is great because I plan to have a rip-roaring good time tonight. It sounds a little wacky I know, but I am off to my writers’ Christmas party at 6:30. I guess to understand this you have to know that for writers time is a very fluid thing. You have a Christmas party in December. Or you have it January, or March, or even August and it’s STILL a Christmas party with presents and Christmas food. So of course I had to wrap the goodies in festive paper and bake a cake. I settled on what has become known at our house as Darwin cake – as you may recall, it’s the one I threw together out of sheer desperation on New Year’s Day. But it was good enough to warrant a reprise, which is handy because it’s a small cake and we are a small group of four who have been together since the early 90’s.

Tonight is extra special though because one of our members, Dandi Mackall, has scored not one, but TWO major victories. Wow – for a writer this is dream stuff. First she sold her novel My Boyfriend’s Dogs to Hallmark who plans to make it into a Valentine’s Day movie, tentatively scheduled for next year. This book is so cinematic it begs to be on film – in fact, I said that to her after I read the manuscript. Imagine this as an opener -- a woman wanders into a St. Louis café late on a rainy night dressed in a wedding gown and holding a leash to which is attached a gaggle of dogs. This sale took place a couple weeks ago and we were definitely planning to raise a glass to it, but then yesterday brought even more mind-blowing news. It turns out that Dandi’s YA novel The Silence of Murder just got nominated for an Edgar which to a mystery writer is the equivalent of an Oscar. It almost doesn’t even matter if you win – just getting to don an evening gown and show up in the Big Apple to schmooze with the mostly famous nominees is heady stuff enough. http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html

Of course after all THAT glittering news anything else I say is going to drop like a blob of lead on a concrete floor, but I did score a sort of victory myself on Tuesday. You may recall that when we bought the books from the House of Torture I mentioned that one very innocuous looking one appeared to be quite valuable. It looks like a complete zilch, but I picked it up, set it aside immediately, and took it home the first day before we even brought the truck. This book is so blah that I would bet an FOL sale could put it on the free table and nobody would take it. Why I felt a little zing! when I picked it up is anybody’s guess. It’s from the 20’s and is titled Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices by Irving Fisher, SIGNED and inscribed by Fisher to Mercer G. Evans who served as Labor Relations Director for the Farm Security Administration. Online copies ranged from $395 to $750, but I’m not greedy, so I priced mine at $395 also, even though it was a tad better than the lowest priced one. To my amazement it sold overnight on ABE as a want match. Of course I like the money, but it’s an equal kick to have recognized a diamond embedded in a lump of coal. It also makes the two days of misery packing all those books a lot more palatable.

Speaking of book buying, would you believe that there are STILL no estate sales this weekend. We went to a small book sale yesterday morning which we hadn’t been to in two years. It used to be a humdinger, but right now it’s the doggiest of them all. Strangely enough though , there were ZERO scanner types and a small crowd, so I was able to get six books for the antiques mall and one I wanted to read. The amazing part was that we walked in and were greeted like the Queen and Prince of England. They thought we’d gone out of business when what we actually had gone out of was patience with scanners and bad books. I think the reason they like us is we used to spend a lot of money, but not this time.Their glass case “specials” included six Rover Boy books with no dustjackets and broken spines at $6 each. I don’t think so ….

Which is why tomorrow will find us trudging off in the snow to another small sale of dubious value and then on Sunday to the Medina Flea Market which lately has been a bit better, but is worth going to only because we live two miles from it. But I am not complaining too much because I did buy some nice stuff on ebay this week, some of which I’ll show you in a future post.

Until then, let’s all have a toast of virtual champagne ( I vote for Veuve Cliquot) for my friend Dandi. Here’s to good news in all its guises!

Little Boxes, Little Boxes ...

2012-01-17T10:55:00.006-05:00

I now truly understand hell. Hell is the place you land as soon as your computer declares its independence. You tell it to delete a photo. It says, “No thank you.” You try to move to the next photo. It assumes a posture of defiance and announces that it most emphatically will NOT. And then for good measure it adds that just in case you’re thinking of renaming all these photos, think again, Missy. After about a week of contrariness I finally decided to take matters in hand. Because I am forever hearing about the need for “cleaning up your computer “(the occasional spritz of Trader Joe’s Cleaniness Is Next to Godliness apparently doesn't count) I broke down and spent almost $40 on Norton Utilities which provides 15 services such as optimization and defragmentation, all of which sounds soothingly medicinal.

As soon as I downloaded the magic software the bad news appeared. My computer was not balky because it’s old (almost four years) and cranky, but because it’s sick – overall health Poor. So I begin running the fifteen utilities and gradually -- oh so gradually --I rise to medium health and then onward and upward to High Health. Alrighty then, am I smart, or what? So I close it out and head happily off to my Pictures program prepared to slam book photos at Abebooks until they scream for mercy. All I can say is, there are times when glowing health does not displace crabbiness. This was one of them.

So now what? I’m completely out of home remedies and have the computer skills of a chimpanzee. All I can do is bite the bullet and call the boys from Brunswick, Larry and Shawn of Net Effects, who have bailed me out more times than I can count. In fact, they never even need to figure who I am when I call – they KNOW and it’s not just because of the frequency of my problems either. I think a certain amount of computer stupidity is in there too. Anyway, I talk to Larry, feeling pretty pleased with myself for have taken the problem as far as I have on my own. Who can argue with such a gargantuan leap of computer well-being performed without assistance by a book geek, huh?

Larry.

“NOT a good idea,” he tells me. “The program duplicates what Windows already provides on your computer (like who knew THAT?) and the two programs end up fighting with each other.”

“But it’s NORTON,” I protest. “Norton’s the gold standard.”

“Yes, for virus protection, but not for this.”

I KNOW, I know. This is Larry talking here, but I still find this hard to believe. Anyone who watched the program’s multi-colored grid go from a scattered mess to rows of neat, orderly, pink, blue and yellow boxes lined up with the precision of a Rockettes' kick line would feel compelled to defend poor Norton. But Larry wasn’t buying. Shawn either. So I decide to let it go, sit back in my fabulous purple chair and watch as Larry takes control of my computer from afar. Mysterious hidden diagnostics suddenly appear from behind never-explored icons, spilling numbers, letters, and symbols like glitter across the screen. I watch this display in rapt fascination until I see 97 problems appear in the first fifteen seconds. After that it gets a bit jumbled, but somehow we meet up with the ominous BLUE SCREEN.

“Uh-oh,” says Larry.

“Did we just crash?” I ask.

“Might have,” he says.

Oddly, I don’t panic. Instead I calmly calculate the cost of a new computer, decide it can still be done for under $2000 and resign myself to my dismal fate. Only wait! We have not crashed after all. Or we did and then we recovered. Either way we’re back up and Larry is deleting stuff I’ve never seen before. To make a long story short my computer had a parasite, a malicious cyber tapeworm which ate up the functionality of my Pictures program and was introduced by some sort of grocery coupon site. It’s pretty funny considering that I’m lucky to get to the grocery at all, much less with a checkbook. If I have a list we consider it a red letter day. But if I ever slouched into Buehler's clutching a wad of crumpled coupons the entire place would erupt with more shock than it did the day a deer wandered in. Which of course leaves one big question -- how did a grocery coupon site take up residence on my hard drive anyway?

“When something on the internet says it’s free, it’s not,” Larry says in the voice of a sage.

I believe him. I really do. And why shouldn't I? My computer works again, I either didn’t crash or survived a crash, I didn’t have to spend a bunch of money I can ill afford, and I can once again upload pictures to ABE. I even believe him about the Norton Utilities program. Sort of.

The little pink, blue and yellow boxes may be made of ticky-tacky, but whatever else might be said of them, they still put on a damn good show.

I bet the Rockettes would back me up on that.

Binging On Books

2012-01-13T11:57:00.003-05:00

I’ve had a cold the past couple days which is why I haven’t been lurking over here. I never really took to the couch, just sort of dragged around doing what needed to get done. Otherwise I spent most of my time sneezing and trying to buy books on ebay. Usually I’m rather lucky with this, but in the past couple days I bid on six and got none. One of them I really wanted too – a gorgeous, and I do mean gorgeous early copy of Cecily Barker’s The Flower Fairies with a DUSTJACKET and 72 plates rendered in saturated color. I took the bidding to $150, but lost in the last couple seconds. My only consolation was that the “winner” did too because the reserve wasn’t met.

So this morning, in a fit of desperation (no estate sales this weekend), I hit ebay again with a new tactic. Instead of trying to hold my ground on the higher end stuff, I decided to bid the minimum on stuff that would either be a.) great for the mall or b.) profitable online, but of interest only to a small audience which means a slow turn-around. I left five bids which I will not change. This time it’s a deliberate crap-shoot. I figure it’s kind of like buckshot – shoot a bunch of it over there and some of it’s bound to stick. I know what you’re thinking because one of you already mentioned this to me. Why am I feeling bereft of books when we just bought that mountain of boxes from the House of Torture?

The short answer is I know for a fact that they contain only a small number of additional online titles (I had sequestered some and already listed them and all that’s left to be found are the sequestered ones I hastily packed after the explosion) and a larger, but by no means huge, amount for the antiques mall. The rest go straight to the store. Even the ones for the mall, though reasonably plentiful, don’t get me out of the woods because they are ALL military and I’m loathe to turn my booth into Wars-R-US which means it will be a gradual process. (Whoa! I just won four auctions -- a town history for online, ten magazines which could go either way, an antiquarian title on the Brownings in Italy for the mall, and a coal mining equipment catalog from 1935 for online. NOW we’re talking! If I get the last one, the antiquarian two volume leather set of essays, I’ll be batting a hundred, or a thousand, or whatever it is you bat when life is good.

Lest you think all I did yesterday was hang around on the internet, I did add some new listings too. As I’ve mentioned many times, the fastest way to jumpstart your sales is to add new titles. You may not sell those, but you’ll sell something else at least. I don't know if it works that way everywhere but it does on ABE and of all my current sites ABE loves me best. Except for an $80 book about a Hessian mercenary in the American Revolution and a $30 book on the Dobama Movement in Burma, I confined myself to adding magazines and paper this time. I had been stockpiling books for the antiquarian show, but in a moment of hysteria after Christmas I listed a boxed set of six fantasy novels by Andre Norton from the Witch World series which contained a rare Witch World map. I thought I was safe because even though I was the only one who had the map I was twice as high as everybody else at $75. You got it – they sold yesterday on ABE after being online a mere twelve days.

There’s no question that books sell faster than magazines and paper which is why I HAVE to engage in this buying frenzy. I have a ton of magazines and paper and a scarcity of books. However, magazines and paper HAVE been selling on ABE this week. Two customers bought multiple issues of the very elegant Double Gun magazine, one bought ten china painting magazines, and I just sold a 1925 travel booklet for an around the world cruise for $35. So no complaints.

Meanwhile I expect the buying binge to continue, especially since I won my final auction just this second for the two volume leather bound set. Buying online isn’t the easiest way to replenish your stock, and it’s definitely not as cheap, but there’s one big advantage. I COULD be huddled in some estate sale line tomorrow shivering in the snow, or I could be here in my sweats sitting in my fabulous purple chair drinking coffee from my favorite mug with the green pear on it.

Truth is -- I'd rather go to an estate sale.

The Life-Givers

2012-01-10T11:06:00.008-05:00

Yesterday was Aunt Ruth’s memorial service and I was dreading it. Having grown up Irish Catholic the buttoned-down Congregationalist funerals of Eric’s family always left me feeling desolate as though the person who died had somehow disappeared into the ether never to return, even in memory. No one told stories, no mementoes ever graced a table. In fact, if anything, everyone worked hard NOT to talk about the deceased for fear that pain would stride unbidden into the room, pull up a chair, and boorishly refuse eviction. At an Irish wake, or an Irish funeral, emotions pour like Guinness, dark, thick and blanketed in froth. Great howls of laughter ride the waves of mournful despair. My skin, my blood, my bones remember yet the prayers, the fog of incense, the rise and fall of voices reciting the rosary in a singsong cadence, “Hail Mary, full of grace …”

But my soul remembers best the stories, the lifegivers. My grandfather died when I was a senior in high school. It wasn’t supposed to have happened. The surgery was a success, no cancer, and yet he died anyway. On the same day my Latin teacher, Mr. Wahl, who somehow managed to make a dead language hilarious, died of a massive heart attack. As pallbearers carried my grandfather’s body out of the church another set of pallbearers carried Mr. Wahl’s in. The day felt surreal, an out of body experience through which I moved like a flat cardboard paperdoll. But after the concelebrated Mass everyone piled into cars and wound their way through the streets of south Akron to my grandparent’s brown brick house which seemd to me in childhood a fortress. People filled the two parlors, congregated around the food in the dining room – my favorites, soda bread with raisins, and black currant cake eight inches high -- and squeezed into the kitchen where the old formica table served as a makeshift bar. Within minutes, the old house on Princeton Street that my grandfather had so loved and had nearly lost during the Depression, thrummed with energy. And there in the middle of all, sat himself, puffing on a cigar and holding court, alive again in the stories. I never wanted it to end.

All this week I’ve wrestled with myself about the propriety of telling a story about Aunt Ruth. Did I dare, or should I just read some agreed Bible verse? I finally opted for the middle ground and decided to send her an old Irish blessing in lieu of prayers.

“May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

Yes, I would do it. Even though I knew I’d cry I’d take the leap and do it anyway. But my feet dragged as we trekked up over the rise in the small old cemetery in Lodi to the very back with its panoramic view of the exposed sedimentary rock of the enscarpment. There were only about eighteen people because that’s what happens when you are very old and have outlived most of your friends. There was also no minister, which struck me odd, until I realized we might be better off without one after all. Eric’s sister began with a reading from Rosamund Pilcher’s novel September (Aunt Ruth loved Rosamund Pilcher) which begins, “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged …”

Halfway into the passage her voice broke and through the crack a door swung wide open. One by one people told a story or shared a memory. Only the women shed tears, but the men told stories too -- wonderful stories of Aunt Ruth and two of her girlfriends packing up a camper truck and heading off on a lark to Alaska back in the 70’s. How she always ordered mashed potatoes in restaurants only to be surprised when they came smothered in gravy. She’d gaze down at them, murmur “Oh my,” and then dutifully eat them. Finally after several repeat performances and her inability to ask for something off the grid her fellow diners would shout at the waitress in unison, “NO GRAVY!”

We also laughed over some of her more infamous misinformed beliefs. The woman held a master’s degree from Case Western Reserve and yet could never be persuaded that cutting a head of lettuce with a knife would not “cut through the vitamins.” One by one each great-niece told of baking cookies, sleeping over at Auntie Ruth’s apartment, trips to Sea World, making crafts, learning recycling before it became commonplace, and as my oldest daughter put it, “always being there for us.”

For more than half an hour we stood in the sun, unmindful of the cold, and told stories. I told how we would not even HAVE our oldest daughter had Aunt Ruth not convinced the social service agency she worked for to take a chance on us back in 1974 when adoptions from Korea were about as common in Akron, Ohio as visits from international dignitaries. I recalled how warmly she welcomed me to the family in 1970 when I was a very young bride. And how when she came every Christmas Eve to spend the night she and I would stay up late and watch old movies – The Bishop’s Wife, Holiday Inn, Christmas In Connecticut. And then I spoke the Irish blessing from memory and conjoined my tears with those already shed.

Afterward we went out to lunch and sat, all eighteen of us, at a common table. There were no spirits of the alcoholic variety, but lots of food, and even more laughs. And there in the center of it all sat Aunt Ruth, quietly holding court, and snapping her endless pictures so as never, ever to forget this time.

As if we could.

(The photo at the top is Aunt Ruth, taken in 1946. I apologize for the size but cannot shrink it.)

Hanging On to the Boards!

2012-01-07T09:04:00.005-05:00

This has been one strange week. Rarely do I find myself gone for days at a stretch with no time for listing, photographing, facebooking and twittering. I don’t miss the last two, but if I don’t get back to work today on the first two occupations my sales are going to dry up like a creek in a draught. So instead of cleaning my house, which I should also do, I will be cranking out listings from now until six p.m. when the store closes. The sad part is Wednesday’s auction provided precious little new stuff, most of which is languishing in the SBB, and yesterday’s estate sale provided even less. Make that none.

We hit the road for Aurora at seven a.m. yesterday, not because the sale sounded so fabulous, but because it was the only game in town, except of course it wasn’t even close to being in town! It took an hour to get there and the “lots of books” advertised in the paper turned out to be “some” books, none of which proved worthy of their $5 a book price tag. We’re talking Danielle Steele here – and I mean that literally. This particular estate sale company used to be good, but I haven’t bought a single book from them in a whole year and it’s not because I haven’t gone to their sales. What’s interesting is that the house was a contemporary glass and marble palace and yet we’ve hauled better books out of inner city row houses. On the positive side we did get one great thing for the upcoming Akron Antiquarian Book and Paper Show.

I sold paper at this show last year, but for the first time NOBS has extended an invitation to ephemera dealers, so this year the competition will swell faster than a sprained ankle. I’ve noticed even at the mall that boxes of plastic-bagged items, even when there is adequate space to flip through them, do not attract buyers like items laid flat or hung on the wall. I had been envisioning some sort of bulletin board apparatus that would stand up against the back of the tables where items could be tacked up for high visibility. We’ve been mulling over such a thing for weeks now and what do we find in the basement of this house – not one, but TWO, folding boards exactly like I had in mind. And get this – the price was $10 for both! So it could be argued that the trip and the many hours lost were not in vain after all, especially since I can use one at the mall after the show. We’ll have to remove the legs and find a way to anchor them to the tables, but Eric is very crafty at things like that. So I’m not going to give it another thought except in terms of what items will grace them.

My dearth of books, however, is becoming serious. I cannot believe that after all these years we hold so little inventory. I bought huge collections – and in the case of the infamous Elmer, a MASSIVE collection -- and yet have little left to show from them. Of course partly that’s because I maintain around a thousand books at the mall, but even so, most of what I got from these big buys has been sold. All through the fall we were book sale junkies, including that trip to Dayton, and yet here I am still singing the bookless blues. Yesterday I even hit ebay again and scoured the joint for bargains. Several hundred listings later I finally found a good one on auction, locked in my highest price, and never looked at it again. So I was rather surprised when I saw I’d won. The opening bid was $10 and I got it for $20 including shipping, so it wasn’t too terrible, but I’d still have liked $10 a whole lot better. As nice as it is, it's also just ONE book and I spent way too much time acquiring it.

Well, here’s a weird thing! I went out to the garage just now and dragged in one of those folding displays upon which I planned to tack up some bags of ephemera to give you an idea of what it will look like at the show. But I opened it up only to find that it already contained a display. And not just any display either. This is a high school science project about Lodi Park in the Mississippian Period. I ran and got Eric who went nuts over it and tried to get me to let him have the whole shebang for his store which is located in – ta-da! -- Lodi. But nothing doing. The display is mounted on brown paper stapled to the boards, so he can remove the staples and take the display along to the museum where his customers can peruse information about the exposed sedimentary rock cliff until the next millennium.

But for now at least that board is MINE!

Girlie-Girls at the Auction

2012-01-05T10:17:00.005-05:00

The 2012 buying season launched yesterday with a country auction conducted by my favorite auctioneer, Don Wallick, who can actually sing auction patter to the tune of Ten Little Indians. I’ve mentioned him here before, but every time I hear him, which is maybe three times a year, I get such a kick out of it it’s like a whole new experience. This time the ad promised better than reality, but I did get some stuff – all paper. The books were truly terrible -- broken down, worn-out, odiferous tomes in need of serious plastic surgery. So I let those go and honed in on paper, some of which still required the “nose test.” I will not buy overwhelmingly musty items no matter what they are, but I will break down and get those with just a light whiff because I’ve had great success getting rid of minor odors. The downside is you have to tie up your money for a full month as they languish in what we refer to as the SBB, or Smelly Book Box.

The process is simple though. I use a large plastic tub with a lid and a product called, plainly enough, Book Deodorizer, which I buy online from http://sicpress.com/book-deodorizer. This stuff is biodegradable and not too pricey at $16 a pound because it lasts for a long, long time. I know non-clumping kitty litter is dirt cheap, but these magic pellets are much better. Because of them I’ve been able to buy gems I wouldn’t have looked at twice and that includes books as well as paper. So when you consider that it provides you with a chance to seize the moment as well as make a nice profit, Book Deodorizer quickly pays for itself. And, no, this not a paid advertisement! I truly like the stuff and am passing it on to you in case it helps. Below see a photo of some items in the SBB. The pellets are visible in the upper left corner.

One thing that was funny about the auction was that I wound up for the second year in a row with girlie-girls, my affectionate name for the pin-ups of the 40’s. Last year I had great ones, all bought from the same estate sale, including Esquires, the scarce Springmaid calendars, Earl Carroll’s showgirls, and the coveted Vargas. This time I got MacPhersons, but they’re colorful and gorgeous inside and retain their original envelopes. I only got two – they had three – but the third lacked the envelope and was smudged on the front, so I passed. Here’s an interesting fact about them that I may, or may not, have shared in the past. For some very odd reason, unknown to me, women buy these much more frequently than men do – at least in my experience. Every one I sold, except for one from the Akron Antiquarian Book Fair last year, was purchased by a woman. Even my one male buyer bought the Varga for his artist wife. One other one, the Springmaid calendar, was bought by a woman, but for the historical society in the town in which it originated. The only theory I've ever come up with on the subject is that perhaps some women buy them for the same reason African Americans buy old racist advertising -- as part of their exploited past. But it could be too that women just find the girlie-girls fun. Sometimes we risk overthinking stuff.

Anyway, the other thing I got were lots of Ohio related booklets and a couple great oversized booklets on steamships. Some of these are currently residing in the SBB, but will be fresh and perky long before the show in April. My favorite is a booklet about the Cleveland Coloured Gospel Quintet which has some snapshots of the group laid-in. But happy as I am with the spoils, my old auction complaint remains viable. As always, at the end of an auction they gather stuff up into lots, which would be fine were it not for people rummaging through them and mixing it up and the fact that like things don’t always get boxed together. Consequently, it’s easy to miss something you had previously picked out. I had had my eye on two Electrolux catalogs from the 30’s with GREAT illustration, but when I went back to see where they’d landed I couldn’t find them. All I can think of is they must have gone into the box heaped with wretched looking Physical Culture magazines, as it’s the only one I didn’t plow through. I was pretty disappointed because I have a customer to whom I could have quoted . Grrrrrrr …

But overall, long day that it was for relatively few items, I enjoyed being back in the groove. As you probably know by now, I whine and kvetch like a broken record, but in the end, I still love the thrill of the chase!

News of the New Year

2012-01-02T13:50:00.003-05:00

If the start of the new year is any indication of the rest of it I am both a happy person and a happy bookseller. Yesterday we had planned to have our New Year’s dinner around six, but early in the afternoon we got a surprise call from our estate sale friend Darwin asking if we’d like to come for dinner. We said we would and I offered to bring a dessert, which I did, but it ended up on par with the loaves and fishes – something made out of nothing. The grocery store was closed and I lacked at least one ingredient for anything I tried to make. Out the window sailed pumpkin pie, apple pie, gingerbread, cranberry cookies, brownies, and cheesecake among a cookbook collection worth of other ideas ranging from exotic to predestrian. In the end the ONLY thing on the planet I could concoct was a plain vanilla made-from-scratch cake with white frosting upon which I crumbled chocolate-covered Cadbury cookies to give it a much needed zip. Actually it tasted pretty good, so it wasn’t a bad finale to pork roasted in beer and sauerkraut, ceasar salad, mashed potatoes and fresh green beans with caramelized onions. The antiques dealer, it turns out, knows how to navigate his way around a kitchen!

Adding to the pleasure was a nice dry white wine, the company of cats (oh, I so miss my Mickey), a wonderful old house (show me a good old house and I’m weak in the knees) and spirited conversation sprinkled with high hilarity. It doesn’t get much better than that. Except it did. First thing this morning the phone rang – Eric had just left for the store, so it wasn’t even nine – and on the line was a collector wanting to buy a signed first edition of the rare George Schreyer Sr. & Jr., Gunmakers of Hanover, York County, Pennsylvania priced at $275. He’d seen it on alibris, but called me direct, which is a rare phenomenon itself from the alibris site. It happens fairly regularly on Abe, but I think this is the first time, or at least a rare time, from alibris. May the momentum continue!

Just as I finished the above paragraph I got a call from Eric’s sister to say that Aunt Ruth died this morning. Perhaps you remember that we celebrated her 92nd birthday at a small party at the nursing home two weeks ago where I gave her the Dickens pop-up book. In a way I’m not really surprised by the news because Moira and Brian and the kids and Catie and Joe went to visit Christmas Eve morning and reported that she didn’t seem to know who they were. She knew they were family, but that was about it. For the last couple days she’s done little but sleep, so in the end she just peacefully drifted away. I feel sad, but mostly glad that the end, when it came, was as serene as the way she lived her life. None of us can ask for better. If there’s a heaven Aunt Ruth’s a shoo-in. Below you can see a picture of her with our oldest grandson Tyler when he first came from Korea eight years ago.

Given this unexpected news, I think I’ll finish this later. In no way is it a bad start to the year though – not at all. It’s a surprise that isn’t really a surprise. And a dignified end to a good life spent doing good. Imagine a world in which everyone lived that way.

The Onus of New Year's

2012-01-01T11:09:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year, everybody!

It’s ten-thirty in the morning as I write this and Eric and I almost have the tree down and packed away. This is a process that never fails to turn me into a tug-of-war rope. I want it gone – tug to the right – no, wait, I don’t! – tug to the left – until I finally holler “Uncle!” from sheer exhaustion and start yanking off ornaments. There’s something so renewing about reclaiming your space and returning to real life after the frivolity of the holidays and yet there is something wistful too about the passage of another Christmas.

I am both amazed and grateful today for my end of the year sales wrap-up. This week at the antiques mall, particularly yesterday and the day before, was outstanding. In those two days I made up for two weeks of not-so-hot. They bought Civil War stuff, the two volume set of Howe’s Historical Collections, books on collecting, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, a movie souvenir booklet for The Longest Day, art books, magazines, a couple children’s books, and I don’t know what all. I was in there Friday to bring new stuff (the Rubyiat was one of them) and the parking lot looked like a crazy-quilt of cars, so I wasn’t surprised to see the aisles filled with browsers, many of which turned into buyers. If the owner’s smile got any brighter you’d need protective glasses just to check out. I like her very much and this is her first year of ownership, so the sight of her joy doubled my own pleasure. Even online sales improved over the last couple days, so the month ended better than I dared hope.

Last night we stayed home and had a quiet night. I had planned on making our New Year’s dinner then, but didn’t because we decided to bail on the auction planned for today and substitute another one Wednesday, so I just made a pizza and salad. We had two movies from Netflix, but both were duds and we didn’t watch them. Of course after having seen Woody Allen’s fabulous Midnight In Paris earlier in the week a gazillion dollar extravaganza would look like a first grade pageant.. So we read instead– I’m half way through Verghese’s Cutting For Stone at page 347 and still love it – and fell asleep before the witching hour. Eric woke up in the nick of time and woke me up too so we saw the ball drop on Times Square, wished each other Happy New Year and went to bed. Do we know how to party, or what?

Of course New Year’s always arrives dragging in an onus of responsibility for us all Every year I vow to be a perfect person. Seriously, I look at everything about me that needs improvement and decide to tackle it all in one go, which means of course, that when the next New Year rolls around I’m my same imperfect self. So this year I’m honing in on one thing – that balance we talked about in my last post . I hate to say this, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope for success. Nancy and I walked yesterday (five miles) and as the conversation on this topic unfolded I realized that what I STILL want most is to sell books. Both of my daughters think I should be writing, Eric thinks that too, and so does my writers’ group. I even think so myself sometimes.

But for me the call of the books is the Angelus at noon. The bell peals and I am Pavlov’s dog with an ex-Catholic’s conscience, still in love with the ritual of bookselling and still mumbling the old familiar words – “Very nice, clean book in like jacket. Oversized at 9”x12-1/4” with no bumps to boards, no names or writing, no tears or chips, and jacket protected by brand new mylar …”

Never mind that I hate the proliferation of junk sellers, the craziness of book sales, the invisibility of quality books, the escalating cost of buying stock, the greedy paternalism of the listing sites etc. etc. etc..

For better, or for worse, I am a bookseller.

Me on the Balance Beam?

2011-12-28T11:00:00.004-05:00

I finally have everything out from under the Christmas tree and in doing so couldn’t help but notice that my husband appeared to be sending me a message this Christmas. He knows from long experience that I am not dazzled by diamonds, perfume, clothes and fripperies (though there was one very memorable amethyst and diamond ring that was a big hit some years ago), preferring almost always the practical to the pretentious. Among the offerings this year I found three writing magazines published by Writer’s Digest, plus a year’s subscription to same, paint brushes (two kinds), and a new bag for carrying books home from sales.

Had it not been for the bag I would have thought these gifts were a gentle warning that maybe books won’t survive the Kindlization of the world and I may soon need a fall-back occupation. Even WITH the bag a nagging little worry nibbled at my edges even though every item delighted me. Finally I broke down last night and asked him point blank , “Are you trying to tell me I’m going to be out of work soon?”

“Whaaaaaaaaat?” He looked at me like I’d just suggested we summer on Mars. “Why would you say THAT?”

“Because Christmas sales weren’t as good as last year both online and at the mall and because a gazillion more people got e-readers for Christmas and it won’t be long before every book known to mankind can be bought on them.”

Yeah, that got his attention all right. For a second he mulled it over and then said, “Well, all that’s true, but I’m not ready to go there yet. I still think there’s a market for books and there will be at least until our generation’s gone.”

Like that’ll be a long time from now. But still, he had a point. “Okay, you’re probably right and I choose to believe it too. But I never have time for anything but books and now with things the way they are booksellers are going to have to work harder than ever to compete.”

As soon as that last part was out of my mouth I knew what was coming. And sure enough …

“It isn’t possible to work harder than you already do! You’re OBSESSED. And meanwhile all the other things you love – writing and art – fall to the wayside. I’m just suggesting that you need balance this year. You started a novel and it’s good. You need to finish it.”

Ah, the novel. Well, yes, I did start it. And I did (do) want to complete it. BUT. After flipping through the writing magazines it’s evident that in the ten years since I last wrote anything for publication an earthquake also rocked the publishing world. No longer does it work the way it used to. These days a writer apparently needs a platform or platforms. The only platforms I ever had was a cool pair of shoes back in the 70’s, so this is not looking too good. What this means is a writer needs to conduct a social media popularity contest before even THINKING about writing so much as a grocery list for publication. I show up over here more than I do on Facebook or Twitter which isn't as much as I'm supposed to and I know I don’t promote anything the way I should. Consequently, I doubt very much that my 41 blog followers, 60 twitter followers, 25 Facebook business followers and 46 or 47 (I forget which) Facebook personal followers will make me a hot commodity.

But that being said, I still think that perhaps Eric is on to something. The odds probably aren’t great for any of my three passions on their own long-term, but maybe together they’ll end up being a whole job. And I’ll end up being a more balanced person.

But you know what? There’s a noisy little part of me that STILL thinks that if I could get some decent books in here on a regular basis like I used to we wouldn’t be having this conversation!

My O. Henry Christmas Story

2011-12-26T10:48:00.003-05:00

I saw a picture on Facebook yesterday of a little girl sitting under the Christmas tree in her fleecy “feetie” pajamas, her legs encompassing a mound of presents. That would be me today with gifts both tangible and intangible. I feel almost at a loss for words this morning , but I think maybe if I work at it here I can probably scrounge up a few. The trick is to isolate one of the many gifts of Christmas and zap it with a bright beam of light. So I will tell you just one story today, the one I mentioned the last time I wrote. It’s amazing to me that I used the words “trivial and silly” to describe it because it wound up being so huge I would never be able to find a box big enough to contain it.

It all began with the Chinese soapstone bookends. Remember those? My friend Nancy saw them here on the blog and told me a funny story about having collected a single chipped one when she was a kid during a door to door treasure hunt for merchandise to hold her first (and last) rummage sale. Of everything in the red wagon she used to collect the loot the chipped bookend was the only thing she remembered decades later. I told you that and about how she rediscovered the original not long ago in her sister’s house in Utah. But what I didn’t tell you is that the day I went to the mall and found them stolen was the day I went to get them to give to Nancy for Christmas. If my reaction to their loss seemed extreme that would be the reason why.

As soon as I wrote that they’d gone missing Nancy sent me an email saying that if by any chance the mall found them (I filled out a missing item report) to let her know because she wanted to run over and buy them for her brother-in-law for Christmas. Hours later I also got an email from her sister in Utah saying that if they reappeared SHE wanted to buy them for Nancy for Christmas! I told them both that I found it highly unlikely, but would let them know if a miracle occurred. Shortly thereafter a THIRD person wrote expressing a desire to buy them too, though this woman I didn’t know. I ran an internet search and found two sets in the exact color and design, but both were priced at $150. Mine were just a third of that.

“No wonder they were stolen,” I told Eric. “We’ll never see them again and there’s no way I can get another.”

A week later I was signing us in at the mall while Eric hauled the week’s books back to the booth. Normally he’d start shelving, but this time he came back to meet me. “There’s something I think you’ll like back there,” he said. “Come on!”

I couldn’t believe it. COULD. NOT. BELIEVE. IT. Both bookends with my ticket still attached sat on the tea cart as though they’d been there the whole time. There was also a single brown one in the exact same design with no ticket at all! I turned that one in at the front desk and discovered that mine had been hidden by someone who apparently wanted to get them, but didn't have the money right then. Wow -- talk about energy, these things were fairly buzzing! Suddenly I felt desperate to get them out of the mall, so I sprinted back to the booth and snatched them up just as a guy came by, glanced at the box on the floor beside me and thought I was taking them out for display.

“Those for sale?” he asked.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Okay, so that might have been a little dramatic, but at this point I wouldn’t have given to them to the pope, the president, or the Dali Lama. Didn't I tell you in the last post that you couldn't make this stuff up?

But here’s the sticky wicket. Who should get them? Me who wanted to give them to Nancy? Nancy who wanted to give them to Wayne? Or Nancy’s sister, Kathy, who also wanted to give them to Nancy? It was easy to eliminate the new guy and also the woman I didn’t know on the internet – they were out in five seconds flat, as was the person who hid them, though that of course was by default. By the time we got home Wayne was crossed off the list too. Clearly, the bookends belonged to Nancy who knew they were special long before anybody else did. But the big question remained. Who should give them to her? Me, or Kathy?

Selfishly, I wanted it to be me. Nancy is – well, it would take more words than you want to read to say what Nancy is to me. But something kept telling me they weren’t mine to give. No matter how many times I reframed it, the truth was that the bookends represented a moment shared by Nancy and Kathy long before I ever entered the picture. So of course I ended up emailing Kathy and telling her they were hers. At first I had planned to engage Nancy’s daughter to hide them until Christmas morning, but her work schedule was so insane I could never nail her down and, if I did, it would just be adding another level of stress to it all So I wrapped them, wrote “Love from Kathy” on the card and presented them to Nancy on Friday when we had breakfast, exchanged gifts, and did our Christmas grocery shopping.

I don’t want this to turn maudlin, but here’s the thing. In every way that mattered the booksends were a gift from Kathy. Yet somehow they were a gift from me too. And a gift TO me. I can’t explain it, didn’t expect it, but here it sits today, under the tree with my mound of other presents, right smack in the middle with my pajamed legs around them all.

Oh, and one more thing. I bought the bookends at an estate sale in Akron at the home of Robbie Stillman who, believe it or not, turned out to be a long-ago friend of Nancy’s. Random chance?

Not a chance!

A LOT Like Christmas!

2011-12-22T12:44:00.001-05:00

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas ….” – FINALLY.

I had a small setback which had me parked on the couch all day yesterday in a snit until I realized there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it. There was no choice but to give in to the inevitable and spend the day reading Abraham Verghese’s glorious first novel Cutting For Stone. Verghese is a medical doctor, but also a writer of the first order and a graduate of the famous Iowa writing program. His use of language, attention to detail, and almost painterly craftsmanship dazzles me, humbles me, makes me wonder what the hell I’m even thinking calling myself a writer. I wish I had discovered his book before I went Christmas shopping, as there would have been many copies under the tree.

As I have mentioned maybe once or twice (we don’t enjoy talking about it, so we try not to), I have had fibromyalgia all of my life. Anyway, I went into a flare on Monday. On Tuesday after I finished the tree I took the empty boxes down to the basement only to have my knee buckle on the way up, sending skyrockets of pain shooting throughout the area. I crawled the rest of the way up and hobbled to the couch where I pretty much resided until this morning when I realized I just might live to tell the tale. The good news is I can once again walk upstairs using both legs. But the bad news is there will be no alcohol, fat, or sugar for ME this holiday. No sherry trifle, no lasagna, no wine. No fair.

But I do know something pretty fun that I can’t tell you yet because somebody who shouldn’t might chance over here and see it. This is absolutely hysterical! I’m telling you, even Verhgese with his all prodigious skills couldn’t make this up. Even if he could he wouldn’t of course because it’s too trivial and silly, but I LOVE it. This story has so many twists and turns that experiencing it was like cruising the Pacific Coast highway in a convertible. So now I’m hoping for a bang-up spectacular outcome. Stay tuned.

Tonight Catie and Joe will be here overnight on their way to Joe’s dad’s house with the dog. They’ll leave Leo the dustmop cat with us tomorrow morning and then come back on Saturday which will be our family Christmas because Moira and Brian need to get the little boys back home to Michigan in time for Santa. I used to hate this, but I understand that they need to be home, so I’ve adjusted as grannies must. Tomorrow morning Nancy and I will sally forth to breakfast at The Mill (I’ll probably be eating bread and water) and exchange Christmas presents before we do our Christmas grocery shopping together. We always do this—I know it sounds sort of weird – but it’s a fun and festive thing, so just pretend you agree.

And then check out my little guys. Are they cute, or what?

A Little Like Christmas ...

2011-12-20T12:07:00.004-05:00

I can’t believe I told you I’d be here Monday when I knew full well I was supposed to be with Nancy at the community center for my annual volunteer day. We’ve been doing this together for a lot of years and it’s one of the special days of Christmas for us both. I know I mentioned it last year, but in case you forgot or never read back that far, it’s a very cool program which allows people who need help for
Christmas to come “shop” for their kids. Shop of course means in this instance to peruse the array of brand new toys, clothes, books and puzzles and select items their kids would like at no charge. It used to be a two day event, but now there are pre-shopping days, so the Big Event is womaned only by me and Nancy which means it rocks and rolls big-time because we have a blast doing it!

The shoppers are great fun and sometimes there are cool surprises when drop-in donors play Santa just when the pickings start getting slim. Last year it happened twice and this year just once, but WOW did it happen! A man showed up mid-afternoon bearing skateboards, helmets, watches. pajamas, games, jewelry sets, toddler toys, DVDS and nail polish. The last item proved to be very funny because the second we showed up in the morning we’d spotted this stupid brown leather box that’s been rejected at least four years running. It’s one of those items that have no purpose for being. We moved it to this table and that table and still it was a dog. So when the nail polish arrived we quickly put all 12 bottles inside and –voila! -- they were a perfect fit. And guess what? Not even half an hour passed before the stupid brown box was history. Now, THAT’S what you call retailing! :-)

Believe it or not, I had not one, but TWO, great orders yesterday, both of which were from the new books we bought in Akron. One was actually a Christmas present headed priority mail to NYC, so I ended up down the basement early this morning after all. After I got the mail out I got some books ready to go the mall too just n case I can find time to get there. All I did was replace what sold because I don’t think I have enough room to do anything else. We probably won’t get there anyway though because the store finally kicked into Christmas gear yesterday and pinned Eric to the wall. I talked to him at lunch and he’s crazy-busy today too. Yayyyyyyy!

Well, Aunt Ruth’s pop-up book turned out to be the hit of the party Sunday. Her pleasure in it exceeded my wildest imaginings. She knew it was a birthday party, but asked me whose birthday it was. I told her it was hers and she asked how old she was. When she heard 92 she said, “Me? That’s me that’s 92? Oh, dear. That can’t be right.” Later on she sang Happy Birthday and stopped abruptly at the “dear -------" part and said, “I don’t think I know whose birthday it is.” So we had to tell her again and again she was blown away by her age. But she opened her presents with a glint of glee I didn’t expect and seemed entranced by the elaborate pop-ups. She even read some of the text out loud. I bet you there’s not a Nook or a Kindle on the face of the earth that could have a elicited a response like THAT!

And speaking of Nooks, Kindles, and other such killjoys, a volunteer at the community center yesterday brought us some more books to restock the shelves around five o’clock. I was in the book room neatening up when I overheard her pointing out good titles to the moms. After thanking her for bringing us more goodies I commented on how knowledgeable she was about children’s books.

“Oh, I love books!” she exclaimed. “All my life I’ve loved them and been a big reader. You’ll never see ME getting one of those e-readers. NEVER! It’s not the same experience.”

I'm not sure, but I think maybe that was the exact moment when a host of seraphim and cherubim appeared in a golden light singing their little angel hearts out!

P.S. The photo above is my unfinished Christmas tree which I am off at this moment to decorate. Sshhhhh – don’t even TALK about the unwrapped gifts. I already know they’re still in their bags heaped by the back door where I dropped them Friday. I’ll do them too. but first things first ........ Meanwhile here's a funny picture I just found -- me at 29 with four year-old crying Moira who didn't love Santa even a little bit! Check out the hair color though. I'd completely forgotten my dark brown phase. I think I've had every brown and red shade L'Oreal ever made, but mostly I've stuck to the reds. My nautral color -- who knows?!

A Little Christmas Project

2011-12-17T14:57:00.014-05:00

I thought I’d be over here bright and early this morning, but I started a little project at five a.m. and now at twenty past noon I finally finished it. As I mentioned, we went Christmas shopping yesterday, a task which ended up being great fun with lunch at Olive Garden to break it up. I did have to reluctantly buy from a few large stores inspite of myself, but I made sure to choose ones which haven’t done any evil things (that I know of) lately. The really great part was that everywhere we went perfect things awaited us, so no stress. I hadn’t planned on being creative this Christmas, but two ideas popped into my head while we were out, both of which require time. The one won’t be too bad, but the other was the project I started this morning and which is pictured below.

A couple years ago Eric got me a huge array of gel pens in every color you can imagine and some you can’t. Our oldest daughter flipped over them, but we never spotted such a packaged array during the holidays again. I thought about it while we were out yesterday and decided to buy gel pens individually and then get an old-fashioned pencil box to store them. Well, one thing led to another and pretty soon we’re at Pat Catan’s (fondly known as Pakistan) looking for a container for me to decorate. The box we chose – plain brown heavy cardboard -- is so perfect that all the pens fit inside as though it were made for them. I couldn’t wait to get started decorating, so I flew out of bed at four-thirty this morning, made a pot of coffee, ate a cranberry bagel, and was down the basement tearing paper in fifteen minutes flat. But lest you think it’s all fun and games over here let me mention that rapture extracts a price. As soon as I finish talking to you I’ll be scraping bits of stuck paper off my workbench and gathering up the piles and piles of unused scraps on the floor. But until then here’s what it took to do it -- two catalogs, Acacia and Signals, gold paint, vintage paper, a canceled one-cent stamp, part of an old photograph, part of a new photograph and card stock that I layered to make the button on top. For now at least I like it, but I’ll be wrapping it ASAP because I never tend to like anything I make for more than a day or two which means I’m back fussing with it again!

In addition to shopping we hit the antiques mall yesterday to stock up for the weekend only to find that we had to struggle to shelve it all because we’re running out of space. Eric was saying on the way there that if we wanted to get another booth we could just about do it. But wouldn’t you know – both of the empties in our aisle have filled, including the one next to ours. There is, however, a double across the aisle and down a couple booths that must have vacated this week. If we had a lot more stock I’d be up for the work of moving, but as it is now I shudder to think of it after all we’ve done this week with the Akron books. I don’t even want to think about all those boxes from there waiting to be sorted. We worked on them every day this week and we’ve even sold some books at the store, online, and at the mall, but of course it’s nothing compared to what’s left.

Tomorrow we have to go to a birthday party for Eric’s great-aunt Ruth who lives in a nursing home and is 92. All of her life she worked as an adoption social worker in Akron and was a whirling dervish of activity – she belonged to a church group that baked bread, volunteered at the children’s theater, drove for Meals on Wheels, traveled the world, took painting lessons, took our girls to Sea World and for overnights, and kept track of a gazillion friends. But these days her world has shrunk to the size of a small room and her short term memory is nearly gone. So what to buy for her birthday? Last year I got her a box full of warm fuzzy, fun socks, including a to-die for black pair with leopard faux fur around the tops. I told her I HAD to get those if she wanted to be the cutest girl in the place, which made her laugh.

But this year she’s slowed way down and it wasn’t so easy to find something for her. She used to be a voracious reader and even last year was reading the Jan Karon novels, though of course she’d forget the plots immediately and read them all over again. But no more. As always,when in doubt, I turned to books and bought her a fabulous pop-up of A Christmas Carol that has small books inide that are mechanical too. I hope she loves it because she’s my hand-down favorite of Eric’s relatives. Every Christmas Eve when the kids were little she stayed with us so she could be here when Santa came in the morning. She even went to Chautauqua for a week with us one summer. Personally I think old age is a design flaw. I don't think we need to live forever, but I think it's totally unfair that our Aunt Ruth,who is the BEST, has to wither away in a nursing home.

Anyway, I now have an enormous pile of gifts to wrap, so on that note, I will talk to you on Monday. By then I should have lots of time. Online sales fell short of dazzling this year, though Thursday I hit the jackpot with two days worth of orders compressed in one day, including one three-figure book. But yesterday was down to two orders and today to just one so far. At this rate, by Monday I should be the Queen of Leisure.

P.S. It's okay that I showed you the pen box. Moira doesn't read my blog. She doesn't need to -- she hears all my stories anyway.

Running Fast!

2011-12-16T09:29:00.001-05:00

Sorry I've been out of the loop, but it's been CRAZY. I am running around like I'm training for the Olympics, but I WILL be here tomorrow. Eric and I are headed to the antiques mall in five minutes and then off to Akron for the final Christmas shopping of 2011. Stay tuned ....

Misery: Day Two

2011-12-13T11:44:00.007-05:00

If anyone thinks bookselling is glamorous I would challenge them to join us for Day Two of the misery. Compared to yesterday Sunday was a leisurely stroll through the library of Trinity College, Dublin gazing at the illuminated manuscripts. Not only did we pack and haul sixty cartons of books, but we had actually done forty-five Sunday which I somehow had thought were only twenty. It’s not the manual labor that was the problem – I am really quite strong for a hundred pound weakling with metal in both wrists and have great stamina for stairs. For five hours yesterday I worked like a teamster and am none the worse for wear. My problem was with the highly charged atmosphere in which we labored.

The bath remodeler was there again, as was the sister (who turned out to be very nice). The poor remodeler was on the clock so it certainly wasn’t his fault that he had to block access to the back door most of the day. Why he didn’t have an assistant I don’t know, but he truly had little choice but to press Eric into service again. Even that was okay – Eric can do both demo and plumbing with the best of them in an emergency which is what it rather startlingly became. As with most remodeling projects, removal of fixtures revealed hidden problems which required further work and expense. The remodeler came into the room where I was packing and explained the difficulties to the homeowner. Having done our share of home improvement projects I thought it all sounded pretty par for the course. The homeowner, however, begged to differ. She leaped to her feet (no small feat either considering all the pill bottles lined up next to her) and flew into a rage that colored the air as blue as the Adriatic Sea with a string of creative expletives. It was fairly stunning.

Now imagine that scene in a room with the heat cranked up to at least 75 degrees on a fairly warm day and you will appreciate the perspiration expended by the poor remodeler. Even I, who am notoriously cold, would have bet any profit we make on this that I would very soon melt like candle wax. The remodeler tried again to explain the situation, but gave up abruptly and told her her options. After a second round of histrionics she finally agreed to let him buy the extra parts and finish the job, then promptly got on the phone and ordered enough greasy food to clog the arteries of an army battalion after which she marched out into the kitchen and informed him that if her dog ran out the back door he was DONE.

Just as on Sunday I had deliberately sequestered the books I wanted for online and the mall so they would be easily retrieved, but after that performance I distributed them willy-nilly through the row of open cartons, taped them up, and moved them on out. By the time the food came (the heat in the room and the smell of the grease was enough to knock you dead) I briefly thought maybe death wasn’t such a bad choice given the circumstances. But the grease seemed to revive the reluctant homeowner because after she ate she became inexplicably cheery and sang Eric’s praises to the roof. He was a saint. A saint! (Yes, he is, and his canonization will be held this afternoon at three). By then I didn’t care if she preferred a plague of locusts to us. All I could hear in my head was that old song by The Animals “We gotta get of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do ….”

And so we did. Eventually. Get out.

And then we went home, collapsed on the couch, and ordered a semi-greasy vegetarian pizza for dinner.

Indentured!

2011-12-12T09:41:00.013-05:00

I’m sure you can guess why I’ve not been over here. We spent a great deal of time yesterday packing and loading the book collection we just acquired. If life were fair it would be done by now, but life isn’t always and so we are headed back to Akron at noon. Eric offered to let me bail on it, but I’d feel too guilty if I made him face the misery alone. I just hope it’s not as crazy as it was yesterday. You’d have to have been there to appreciate the breadth and depth of the horribleness, but perhaps this will give you an inkling. While we worked a contractor remodeled the bathroom and the book owner’s wife visited with her sister in same room with me while I packed. You know that old phrase “the elephant in the living room?” Well, that’s what I felt like. Eric didn’t fare much better. Not only did he haul sixteen heavy cartons of books down the stairs and out the back door, but he also ended up helping the contractor haul in the new bath fixtures!

I did manage to isolate what few things I wanted for online and the mall so at least that stuff's easily retrievable. I found one more volume of the set pictured at the top of the last post, so that was cool and also got some nice Formula One Watkins Glen United States Grand Prix racing programs from the 60’s, a miniature French needlework book with color plates, Jane’s Fighting Ships 1906-7; Jane’s Fighting Ships 1914; a scarce book on WWII fighter pilots and a box filled with unused linen postcards from the 40’s. There’s some other good stuff too, but I can’t remember what it is and by the time I got home I no longer cared.

On the bright side I took seven or eight books from this buy over to the mall the day we loaded our car with the eight boxes and already sold one, so that was encouraging. The mall performed wonderfully again this weekend, so by last night I was restored to my former cheerful self. The best sale was a leather-bound medical lexicon from the early 1800’s, but we also sold Civil War, England, books about antiques, natural history, vintage movie magazines from the ‘30’s, vintage travel and even early school books. Online sales finally picked up yesterday too which meant I was up this morning wrapping at four a.m.. The downside is that Christmas is at my house and I haven’t finished shopping, decorating, wrapping, or even thinking about food.

I suppose I should have done some of this Saturday, but I really wanted to research those English documents I showed you last time, so I whiled away a lot of time on that which proved to be most interesting. I also took time to examine the ones I have. There are sixteen in all and one actually dates back to the mid-1600’s! As I suspected, they are indeed handwritten on vellum and are land transfers, though they are called indentures which would make you think at first glance that they had something to do with involuntary servitude. The red disc at the bottom is sealing wax stamped with the “mark” of the seller and the blue ticket at the top is the revenue stamp. But here’s the part I love. See that hand-cut scalloped edge at the top? I thought it was an attempt to be decorative, but it was actually a safeguard. The attorney who drew up the document would make two copies (imagine the work of THAT!) and to insure that they were exact would put them together and cut the design free-hand. The client got one and he kept the other in the office. In order for them to be true copies that scalloped edge had to be identical. I also learned that I can get the documents to lie flat by putting them between two boards and exerting a little pressure. I probably won’t do most of them, but I think I might on the oldest one so I can take it to the book fair in April.

The one pictured below is not the oldest, but I chose it because it IS very early (1707) and smaller in size so easier to photograph. What’s interesting about it is that there is no actual date, so I had to read the first line, ‘’This indenture the sixteenth day of August in the sixth year of the reign of our sovereign, Lady Anne, by the grace of God Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland …” Queen Anne’s coronation was in 1702 so her sixth year was 1707

Anyway, all of that was great fun and it is truly awesome that a 300 year-old document has somehow landed on my living room floor. I would love to dally with it some more today, but I do have to upload some books. In less than three hours indenture will take on its likeliest meaning as we pack and haul once more in Akron.

P.S. I must be getting dotty or something because I was halfway to Akron when it occurred that I called these inscriptions when I meant indentures. I have no clue what THAT was about, but I just changed it!

Like A Spring in the Desert ...?

2011-12-09T11:41:00.008-05:00

Online sales remain lackluster, BUT things are definitely looking up. Yesterday morning I got a tip from my antiques dealer friend Darwin about a book collection for sale. He only had a name and a phone number -- no details on what it was comprised of -- but Eric immediately recognized the name as a long-time customer whom he’d heard had died. So he made the call and, sure enough, that’s exactly whose books they were. The family didn’t know we sell books, though recognized the name of the store immediately and said we could come over as soon as we wanted. So just after lunch we hopped in the car and an hour and a half later owned a crowded roomful of books, magazines, and paper a la the infamous Elmer from whose estate we bought 35,000 items some years ago. Oddly enough, this guy and Elmer were buying at the exact same time and at the exact same sales and both not only chose the same kinds of items, but in some cases, the exact SAME items! Also, both subscribed to the theory that if you like something buy it whether it’s good, bad, or downright ugly. Which means of course that we have a major job on our hands.

When we left home we had no idea that we would be making an offer on the lot, so we took the PT Cruiser which couldn’t even begin to handle it. All we could do is load up Petey with eight full banker’s boxes with the understanding that we would come back for the rest with the store truck Sunday morning. It turned out to be a win/win for both parties, as they wanted them gone and we have the capacity to handle it all neatly and efficiently because the store is huge -- 10,000 square feet including a warehouse to absorb the overage should there be any. I actually like buying a big messy, confused bunch of stuff because the price per item goes down exponentially due to the fact that it’s impossible to examine it all and there’s enormous work involved. In fact, when I packed the boxes I noticed that many free dust bunnies came with the bargain! Clearly, the books hadn’t been touched in years. Some were shelved and some piled on furniture, but most were leaning starboard on the floor or packed chock-a-block in the two closets. Every last one will require cleaning and in some cases small doable repairs and all the dustjacketed ones will need mylar. So if you need me in the next few weeks I’ll be down the basement!

What will happen of course is that the collection will split three ways – store, antiques mall, and online. There’s also the outside chance that MAYBE it could mean being able to grab the empty booth next to ours. I’m afraid to be too hasty because of course we haven’t even seen all of this stuff and won’t until it’s here. But I have to tell you I’m about ready to duct tape my phone dialing finger to the desk to reduce temptation! .I’ve already been through all the stuff we brought home yesterday (worked on it until midnight last night) and Eric got the preponderance. The mall got the next most and I kept about ten things for online, though I’m in no hurry to get them there. My favorite items include the first nine consecutive bound volumes of The Confederate Veteran magazine – handsomely done facsimiles and the cleanest of everything we brought home; a sleeper book I had a hunch would be good and IS; and a stack of amazing British documents handwritten on vellum and dated from the late 1700’s to the early 1800’s. They're enormous and sport a decorative handcut top and are marked with sealing wax. I have do some studying up on those, but the one pictured below seems to be a land transfer or its equivalent. I apologize for not being able to photograph the entire thing, but it's huge and won't stay open. I also apologize for my knee, but I couldn't position said knee out of the picture and still get the portion with the sealing wax.

As for the the above mentioned book, I'm going to save it for later because it may end up being a blog in itself due to the fact that not only will it make an interesting post, but is absolutely the most innocuous little tome you ever laid eyes on yet provides us all with a lesson much like the one I expensively learned with Bird Sanctuaries As Golf Clubs. Remember that one? Yeah. Not good. But this time will be different. Before I do a thing I am going to put some serious time into it, first of all to verify the astounding prices online. I'm a bit optimistic though, as I already know that one of NYC’s most prestigious antiquarian dealers treats his copy like the Crown Jewels. His is better because it’s an association copy in a clamshell box, but his is also many times more expensive than what the other ABAA sellers are asking for their copies which are exactly like mine.

So I guess it looks like my friend Nancy was right. I need to stop thinking doom and gloom, and concentrate on intention. However, at this point the only things that are flowing like her “spring in the desert” are the dollars surging out the door and the unknown books rolling in. Sales? So far, not so much. But call me grateful anyway. It’s been quite a 24 hours.

Gone Fishing

2011-12-07T16:00:00.005-05:00

I’ve been thinking of this blog since I got up this morning – late at 5:30. From then on it’s been one continual race, as I had to wear two hats today, that of P.R. person and that of bookseller. I haven’t had the first hat on since my last outside employment which I finally quit in 1993. In its former incarnation my PR hat was a very sleek and chic sort of thing – the kind of hat that makes many statements that may, or may not, be the truth on behalf of the client who provides it. Those who knew me then thought it fit me to a tee, but they were oh-so-very-wrong. Just because I did it and did it pretty well did not mean that I liked it. In fact, I hated it very much. So doing P.R. for the 30th annual Akron Antiquarian Book and Paper Show coming up in April required some major hat renovation.

After much nipping, tucking, and stripping away extraneous froo-fraw an entirely new hat emerged. It’s the kind you hang on a peg when you come back from a day’s fishing – honest, basic, and strong enough to keep your head from getting sunburned. Not that I’ve ever been fishing, but I think if I DID go fishing that’s the kind of hat I’d want. At any rate, I wanted to put it on as quickly as possible today, get comfortable, and write up something for the FABS newsletter (Federation of American Bibliophilic Societies) about the upcoming Akron book fair in April. This is a very special fair for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it will the 30th annual. To celebrate there’s all kind of new stuff happening this year, the biggest of which is the inclusion of paper (ephemera) dealers for the first time. I did really well with paper last year, so I should probably be cringing at the competition, but I’m not (too much) because it could very well bring in a bunch of new people which is crucial if book collecting is going to remain alive and well in this crazy Electronic Age. The other big change is the addition of two symposia, one each day of the fair, which should prove both fun and educational, especially for new collectors. And, boy, do we need those new collectors!

The first day will be a sort of Antiques Roadshow for books. My book guru, Jim Best, has done this previously, so he’s going to talk about the monetary value of “old books” and provide appraisals for books people bring to the fair. On the second day a roundtable of collectors and/or dealers representing various genres of collecting will field questions and also offer ideas for beginning and building a meaningful book collection.

I’m really jazzed, but I knew I needed to get on it quickly because there’s a lot of lead time before publication with a quarterly newsletter, so I carefully composed my copy, emailed it to the president of NOBS, got the okay, searched for the FABS website, and emailed the contact to ask whether they wanted it sent electronically or on paper and to whom it should be addressed. He wrote back in under ten minutes saying he needs it NOW, as he will be done with the issue at the end of the week. Whew! Right under the wire I flew. All it took was copy, paste, SEND, and we’re done!

So now I’m feeling pretty darn good about that, even though my bookseller hat feels downright itchy today. Sales, which had been just fine, given that it’s no longer the 90’s or the early 2000’s, fell off the map the last couple days. I got a fairly good order from a university library an hour ago, but otherwise I wouldn’t brag about today. I was thinking about why this would be happening in light of the fact that I just uploaded new stuff, when a weird though flitted across my mind like a sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker. Maybe Christmas is HURTING me rather than helping me! Okay, so what does that mean? I thought about it some more and it actually makes a cockeyed bit of sense. There’s only so much money people have to spend on the holidays, so if real books aren’t high on Santa’s list, or the existing stock is not what’s wanted for gift giving, a seller like me with a large ratio of old stuff, but not enough old stuff (there’s NEVER enough old stuff), could be sunk.

I can hear Nancy already as she reads this. Once again I’m doing that thing that starts with a “p” that I NEVER remember, but means I’m sort of losing it.

So maybe I'd better just put my PR hat back on and call the library. I need to nail down a date in March for a program about book collecting which, with any luck, will send a herd of Medinians stampeding to the book fair April 6th and 7th!

True North

2011-12-05T11:18:00.008-05:00

Well, I think I’m finally back among the living. Yesterday I forced myself to go to the NOBS meeting even though it was cold and windy and my sinus headache pounded messages like an African drum from the Gambian bush. There were a few moments when the wind almost sent me airborne as we crossed East 21st Street from the parking garage to the Cleveland State University library, but once we got in and got settled I miraculously revived. Maybe it was the chicken and string beans, but I think it was really the conversation with my book guru, Jim Best, who runs The Bookman of Kent, and Andrea Klein from The Bookseller in Akron.

Sadly, there was only a small turn-out this year, so the festivities ended up a bit more subdued than usual. I’m not sure if was the weather, or the uncharacteristic late date (it’s normally held in October), but only eighteen people showed up. In past years – at the Akron Art Museum, at Baldwin Wallace College, and at Akron’s Greystone Hall where last year we had a rollicking program about the dancing feet of Fred Astaire replete with movie clips, the bibliophiles poured forth in healthy numbers. I didn’t realize that Cleveland State only opened its doors in the mid-1960’s, so while interesting, their special collections were hardly a match for Baldwin Wallace’s Bach collection with notations by Bach. That may have been a factor in the size of the crowd, but my gaze fell on several mighty nice stacks of books about the Cleveland interurbans that I had never seen before and would sure like to find. They also have possession of the entire morgue of the old Cleveland Press and lots of great stuff on the building of Terminal Tower, the architectural drawings for which could be framed as art.

But the best part (aside from the fact that the annual meeting only took two minutes –yay!!!) was the lecture by professor Patrick Chura, author of Thoreau The Land Surveyor. Eric did some surveying when he worked for the Forest Service after his college graduation and before Uncle Sam sent him to Vietnam, so all that talk about 66 chains, true north, magnetic north, sounding holes, and bearings were to him the equivalent of suddenly realizing you still have a grasp of your high school French. Most of the technical stuff flew over my head, but I was nonetheless caught up in the metaphyiscs of mathematics which I found very poignant because Thoreau, too, recognized in his own calculations a kind of poetry. I can only thank my buddy Sunday Morning Joe who, if nothing else, has taught me to see numbers with softer eyes.

We bought the book of course and I am anxious to read it because it is actually accessible to unmathematical dummies like me. I have always been fascinated by the convergence of such amazing talent – Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, and Margaret Fuller, all of whom wound up at the same time in Concord, Massachusetts, a place so small it was a dust mote on the face of America. All were Transcendentalists and, though Bronson in his earlier years may have been a little loopy, they remain resounding voices in our collective literature. I once had an 1895 first edition of Margaret and Her Friends or Ten Conversations with Margaret Fuller Upon the Mythology of the Greeks and Its Expression in Art. The talk filled me with an enormous pang of regret for having sold it to a college in Texas for its special collections.

One thing that added greatly to the lecture was a slide program which showed Thoreau’s actual surveying instruments. In the course of his research, Chura, the son of a surveyor, actually borrowed antique equipment equivalent to Thoreau’s and re-surveyed Walden Pond. Not only did he find that the great naturalist was an excellent surveyor, but he also identified a bundle of metal rods lying idle in a museum as being Thoreau’s chaining pins . We also saw a picture of Thoreau’s yellow house as it stands today along a main street in Concord. Chura pointed out a stone post in front at the street and mentioned that there had been another one just like it, but it had recently been removed to build a storm drain. Both were ordinary hitching posts, but – get this – the one they took out was the one Thoreau used to site true north.

As interesting as all this is, two things will stay for certain with me long after the rest recedes. The first is the image of a downstairs window of the stately yellow house in Concord which Chura pointed to on the screen and mentioned almost as an aside that behind it lay the room where Thoreau died. The second is Thoreau’s moral struggle between the beauty of the land he so loved and surveying, the discipline that he also loved. Because his work caused him to parcel lots for woodcutting which resulted in a significant loss of woodland he wrote two essays near the end of his life exploring it. I need to reread, Walking, and read for the first time Life Without Principle in which shortly before his death he struggled on the page to find peace with the need to make money and the need to be true to ones self In the end though he could finally say, “I am a surveyor” and be at rest.

As you know, I too, sold out my writing which I loved for financial gain and for ten years didn’t write because of it. Only now am I beginning to think of myself as a writer again. So for me Henry David feels like a kindred spirit. I think perhaps to revisit him from the vantage point of his surveyor's compass will help in the ongoing quest to find my own true north.

Eight Years and Thoreau

2011-12-02T15:00:00.004-05:00

I never expected to be gone this long, but I woke up Wednesday zapped with a monster sinus infection. I felt so bad I didn’t even work (is the world still standing?????), but I really had no choice, as every time I stood up I swayed like the leaning tower of Pisa. Yesterday was better, but not by much, so I zoned out most of that day too. Today I’m working, but definitely wouldn’t call myself ready to do battle at an estate sale. I AM, however, well enough to lodge a complaint with whoever’s in charge of sickness. When a person gets a cold, or a sinus thing, I really, really, REALLY think it’s only fair that they be allowed to read all day long if they want to. There I was flat on the couch in front of the fire wrapped up in a blue and green plaid wool Conemara blanket I bought in Ireland when I was younger than both of my kids, a mug of hot tea at my elbow and a brand new biography of Flannery O’Connor and it actually HURT to squint at the page! My only solace was Caitie and Joe’s cat, Leo (aka The Dustmop), who has been here all week while Joe worked in the Toledo office and Caitie was in Canada to meet her client. As Nancy always says, every sickbed and every Christmas tree is improved by a dozing cat.

Of course having not worked for two days meant that today got off to a rousing start with many more books than usual to get out the door, plus the need to renew my ownership of my website’s domain. The latter sounds easy, but it’s not because first I had to find my user and PIN numbers for GoDaddy to do it. Once that was accomplished (no small feat, as I haven’t been over to that site in nine years!) I was immediately jolted to learn that I had to decide how many years to extend ownership. How in this crazy business would I possibly know THAT? I haven;t a clue what will be happening in ten years. Will I still be selling books? Will ANYONE be selling physical books? I don’t know. I think so. I hope so. But do I think and hope it enough to renew for ten years with the casual confidence I signed up with the first time? As it turned out, they would only extend it eight years anyway, so I tossed the devil to the wind and went for the full eight which means that as of this moment I am offcially onrecord.as having shown by my bold and daring move that I do believe in the survival of books. On some level, anyway.

I did manage to look at the estate sale ads this morning, but was not even a little bit tempted. There’s one I might have gone to but can’t because I’m resting up for the NOBS annual meeting. This is always a fun event and should be this year too. It’s going to be held on Sunday at Cleveland State University where we will first eat stuffed chicken, red potatoes, string beans and apple pie and then will hear Patrick Chura, an English professor from Akron University speak on his new book, Thoreau the Land Surveyor. It explores a puzzling dichotomy that I knew nothing about before this. It seems that the great nature lover, nature essayist, and environmentalist ran a surveying business that often parceled out land designated for wood cutting. It will be interesting to me to see how THIS resolves itself and of course my husband will be happily blowing the dust off this forestry degree, so a good time should be had by all.

Following the lecture there’s a general meeting too. I hate to say it ,but I’m not much of a formal meeting girl, so I have to struggle to keep alive during this part. But after it’s over we get to tour the university’s Special Collections which ought to be fairly dazzling. I’m really jazzed to go, so today and tomorrow will be purposely low-key so that come Sunday my brain will be rocking and rolling.

Until then, maybe I can finally read about Flannery.

The Big Box Blues

2011-11-28T10:04:00.003-05:00

Unlike most Americans, we skipped the-stand-in-line-to-gobble-up-cheap-Chinese-imports-for-Christmas thing. We didn’t even venture out on Saturday. As far as that goes, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to shop on Sunday either, but we did because we really do need to get on with it. Interestingly enough, the crowds and mania I feared failed to materialize. In fact, I would say that most stores were no busier than they’d be on any Sunday afternoon and Panera, where we tend to have lunch most Sundays, was MUCH less crowded than normal. You would think, given all that, that it would have been festively fun. But it most emphatically was not.

We decided to concentrate on our little boys for this trip which of course required forays into the big box stores I loathe more with every passing year. But how else does granny buy Lego creatures with a strange name I can’t remember, electronic Scrabble cubes, and other such wizardry? When it comes to the most desired toys the big guys pretty much have you by the wallet. Since Borders closed this year we had to go to Barnes & Noble for books which, thankfully, appeared on the list for both kids. But I so dislike that cold, slick, escalatored emporium that I try to run in and out at supersonic speed. I did get a couple books for Dylan, but Tyler wanted the first two Ridley Pearson novels for kids in The Kingdom Keepers series (which somehow has something to do with Disney), but they had neither one in hard cover. The saleswoman gave me the hard sell, first trying to convince me to buy the paper edition, then wanting to order the hard cover online for me. I told her I could do it myself at home, but she insisted it would be better if she locked it in for me. Guess how much I loved THAT?

Not only did the strong-arm tactic fail, but a small bookstore in Ohio emerged victorious because of it. I got home and thought to myself what if I were to buy them on the secondary market and get one of them signed by Ridley Pearson. Two second after I thought it that’s exactly what I did. I bought via Advanced Book Exchange a fine/fine signed copy from an Ohio dealer, Books of Aurora. Did I pay more? Yes, I did. Do I care? No, I definitely don’t begrudge the extra three dollars. I would rather buy less stuff and support small, independent businesses any day. So actually the whole debacle ended up well if I may say so myself. As for the big box stores, they’ve seen the last of me this Christmas. I bought from Target, Barnes and Noble, and Marshalls, but that’s it. Not another dime goes to any of them even though I’ve barely scratched the surface of my shopping list.

I was thinking about all this this morning when I glanced down at the newspaper and saw a headline which read “Black Friday’s Black Eye.” According to the story, the devious head games the mega-merchants play with their hype, loss leaders, and ever increasing sale hours resulted in escalated violence at stores across the nation. Immediately an image I saw online Saturday popped into my head. Someone had snapped a photo in a checkout line of a shopping cart piled, heaped, and mounded with cheap imported junk and a small baby asleep in the midst of it, off to one side as though she were taking up precious space. I really hate when I rant and I guess this qualifies as a rant, but I truly do think there’s a better, saner way to buy Christmas presents.

Speaking of presents, the antiques mall did very well on Saturday – better even than last year -- so I am very grateful to those who supported us. Sunday returned to a normal Sunday pattern, but I knew it would because we went by twice on our way in and out of Montrose and the number of cars in the parking lot didn’t dazzle me either time. I just hope that once we get over Black Friday and Cyber Monday we can collectively reacquaint ourselves with antiques shops, old-fashioned hardware stores, galleries (museum galleries have great gifts), toy shops, specialty stores and of course – new, used, and antiquarian bookstores.

I think if we slow down, enjoy the experience of browsing in peace, and put more thought into what we give we just might have a happier -- and more human -- holiday.

After the Turkey

2011-11-26T09:17:00.007-05:00

Well, one down and one to go – holidays I mean. The weather was perfect in Ohio this Thanksgiving – sun shining, not too hot, not too cold. The turkey cooked to a turn, every dish came out the way it was supposed to and – amazing! – everybody liked everything. And that includes the two year-old. We never did bake cookies or put up the tree, but that’s because Catie’s boyfriend Joe left the kids a remote control powered Jeep of rather large proportions when they departed for Maryland. We took it outside several times and both kids had a blast – Tyler operating it and Dylan running after it screaming like a wild man. We also took an after dinner stroll uptown to the square – Moira, Eric, Tyler and I did at least -- and wouldn’t you know I never thought to bring the camera. The turbo-charged one finally fell asleep after banging every kitchen cabinet door, walking around carrying bottles of spices clutcdhed in both tiny fists, turning the dishwasher on twice, coating my glass topped coffee table with mashed potatoes (a second dessert?) and hitting the phone locator button so many times it’s amazing it still works. The second that curly little head hit the mattress we were out the door leaving Dad in charge!

Medina’s town square sparkles like a Victorian Christmas card topped off with a wedding cake gazebo in the center of the town park. If you watched the old Gilmore Girls TV show think Star’s Hollow and there you have Medina. All we lack is the town minstrel, but Christmas music poured from the speaker system, though it did zing a bit erratically from down-home country to the rhapsodic Ave Maria. I never think of Ave Maria as a Christmas song because the mailman sang it at our June wedding back in the Stone Age. I know, I know – it sounds bogus having the mailman sing, but it wasn’t. Honest.

We called Caitie and Joe in Maryland when we got back, but couldn’t use Face Time which was the plan because Gran and Papa, Stone Age throwbacks that we are, lack Wi-fi. Who knew you’d need it? I thought the technology had something to do with the phone! I was a little sad that we didn’t get to see them and they didn’t get to see how big Dylan is now. It also made me sad to think of them in a little neighborhood restaurant eating turkey. But they will be here for Christmas, so that helps.

Yesterday performed only like a normal Friday at the mall, so I’m wondering if the Big Box Bonanza took a big bite out of it. Tonight should tell the tale. Last year the Saturday after Thanksgiving rocked and rolled, but with the emphasis on electronic gadgetry,big box deals, and the state of the economy I don’t know that we’ll do as well this time. One thing that brought me up short Wednesday night when I went in to clean and restock was the shocker next door to us – yet another dealer has folded and the booth is empty. That means that in one year both booths alongside ours vacated twice each. I know it will fill rapidly, but the turnover frequency is definitely disconcerting. We are still operating well in the black, but since fall there’s been a decided downturn. Maybe it’s books. Maybe it’s the economy. Maybe it’s the mall. I don’t know. What I do know is that this year I have more and better stuff, but I am hearing from other book dealers at different malls that they’ve likewise experienced a drop since summer.

This time I didn’t even entertain the notion of renting the space. I did, however, buy three large bookcases from the ex-dealer at the bargain price of $10 each. She didn’t sell too many books – mostly the cases displayed glass, linens and other smalls. Even if I never expand to a second booth I can use them here for overflow (whatever THAT is), so it’s a good deal no matter what.

Today I need to get with it and work because yesterday I totally vegged out. I’m not kidding. I didn’t do a blessed thing but tidy up the house and read Peter Stoneley’s Consumerism and American Girls’ Literature 1860-1940. Very good and very eye-opening. I love books about books, but after reading this one I will never look at series fiction for girls of the period in the same way. The author is an English professor from Belfast, Northern Ireland, but I think he pretty well nailed the state of American juvenile lit of the period. I guess it could be argued that reading such stuff won't do much to improve sales. But even with all the very real threats to our profession I still believe that continuing education makes us better booksellers.

By the way, today is the designated national day to support small sellers. I am off right now to buy Eric a Scottish art glass paperweight for his collection from an online antiques dealer. Get thee off to buy a gift from the little guy too. If everyone buys at least one thing that didn't come from a megastore Christmas will be brighter for us all.

Thanksgiving High

2011-11-22T10:20:00.006-05:00

Sometimes life surprises you in odd ways. Would you believe I actually got a chair for the mall after all? I doubt very much it had anything to do with me and my invocation to the furniture gods yesterday, but you never know. One of the estate sale people at the sale where I got my two chairs inquired as to whether Eric would like to purchase the leftover books for the store at an extreme price reduction. Unless you have an open shop you wouldn’t want these even though they’re all popular fiction in bright, attractive, pristine condition. I don’t know how many books he got, but it was around ten big boxes and he paid $25 for the lot! While he was there he noted that some of the things we liked were still present, so he inquired about them too. As it turned out, the only item unsold was the rocker. The rest were accepted bid items which were to be picked up in the next few hours. But I’ll take it, as it had been priced at $175 and last night was marked down to $50. Ah, life is good in Medina today!

I am so revved up though you’d think I was a NASCAR driver at race time. I got up at 4:30 and had ten books listed and uploaded to the various sites before Eric left for the store. My task now is to get a LOT of books ready to go to the mall for this crucial weekend. Sales have picked up again somewhat there, so a spark of hope burns as merrily as a Yule log. I have some very cool stuff and I’m going to decommission a couple online books too because I’m sick of waiting around for someone to buy them. Online selling is so tiresome anymore. How I long for the good old days, but I doubt greatly they will be returning anytime soon. Let’s not talk about THAT though. I’m in a good mood and would like to stay that way.

The mall Christmas sale is on too, so I want to take part in it this year. Last year we opened the day after Thanksgiving, so it was too wild and woolly to even think about it, but this year it’s definitely doable. The way it works is you pick up these red and green tags and you put one on any item you want to include and mark the discount anywhere from 15 to 50 per cent. I have several sets which need to disappear to clear up some much needed space, so they’re what I’m aiming to highlight. I’ll have to do the work at the mall of course, but we plan to spend some time sprucing up anyway – vacuuming, dusting etc. I would like to decorate for Christmas, but you can’t bring anything but vintage stuff to do it and I don’t have any vintage Christmas stuff. I guess I could bring a little garland, but it would hang down over the books which is not so wonderful, so I guess we’ll confine our cheer to great prices on books that need to be under somebody else’s Christmas tree! But next year remind me to get in gear early and get some old Christmas do-dads.

As soon as we finish at the mall we have to run to the grocery to load up for Thanksgiving, as I’m chief cook and bottle washer again after one year off. For the first time ever we won’t have our younger daughter Caitie and her boyfriend Joe here. They live in Maryland now and she has to fly to Canada for her job on Monday, so it's not really feasible to make such a long trip. Today’s her birthday too, so I could get pretty funky over it, but am determined not to. I’m focused on the little guys because it’s also Tyler’s birthday celebration – eight years old this year! How can it be????? I’m doing turkey with all the trimmings of course (Tyler and I like the cranberry sauce best), so tomorrow when I’m not here you can visualize me down in the kitchen slicing and dicing. Actually, I’m pretty into it this year. In fact, I may even bake Christmas cookies with the kids Thanksgiving afternoon even though Dylan, the little turbo-engine, will create a perfect snowstorm of flour and sugar. But, hey, that’s what they make shovels for, right?

Before I go I have to give you at least one picture of something made of paper, so here’s a photo of an ephemera item I bought at the least desirable estate sale Saturday and completely forgot about due to my dizziness over the chairs. I found it in one of our bags this morning and listed it at $45.As you can see, it’s a Notre Dame football program from 1948 – Notre Dame vs. Northwestern. Great year for the Fighting Irish too, as they ended the season undefeated along with the Michigan Wolverines. Check out the full page color national ads too – isn’t that something?

On that note I’m headed for the basement workbench. But first I just want to say that I am so grateful to you all for reading my silly stories, writing me comments, and generally making me feel like it’s all worthwhile. Happy Thanksgiving everyone -- I appreciate you more than you know.

P.S. Darwin just checked in to say that yesterday's featured chairs are contemporary with influence from the Directoire period. Well, who knew?! He also liked them which is a very good thing!

The Answer Is Yes

2011-11-21T10:14:00.009-05:00

The answer to the last question I posed – do the book gods have friends is yes, they do. However, when contacting these friends through an intermediary one must be very specific about one’s wants. And this is precisely where I may have run amok. The good news is I got two chairs for my booth at the antiques mall – matching chairs and beautiful too. But therein lies the problem. They are actually TOO beautiful and too finely made. I got them for a song at $125 each, but I now face several dilemmas. I think they might be mid-century modern, but I don’t think they were mass produced, but then what do I know? I cannot discern their designer and/or maker even after looking at hundreds of modern chairs. The quality is exceptional, the design simple and elegant and they may be European, as their previous owner was European and admired all things Italian. But I feel like they’re Asian, perhaps Japanese. I took a photo of them and will be sending it along to Darwin today in hopes that he and his vast design knowledge will come to the rescue.

But even if he does identify them and provide me with an appropriate asking price (which I think could be fairly good) I don’t think they want to go to the mall. Just for fun I stationed them in my formal living room (amazing how there just happened to be two spaces available) and instantly heard a discernible sigh of relief from both – ah, home at last! Of course the merchant in me noted that if I sold one the other one would be free --and then some. But I don’t want them to go. I really don’t want them to go and neither does Eric. So because I failed to lay out distinct parameters for the furniture gods I am right back at square one with no practical chair which means that Cheryl still can’t go to the mall!

However, the merchant in me was very happy yesterday. I am getting over the theft of the bookends, though a woman did email after having seen the original blog post and expressed interest in buying them. But it’s time for that train to leave the station, so I’ve turned my focus to yesterday’s Medina flea market which was exceptionally good. Interestingly enough, I could have confined myself to just a couple aisles and been out of there in a flash, as everything I bought I bought within fifteen minutes from four dealers This has not happened in so many years I can’t even remember the last time it did. I spent $105 and got the following:

Ohio in the War; Her Statesmen, Generals and Soldiers by Whitelaw Reid (two volume facsimile reprints in original shrinkwrap)

The Autobiography of Captain Alexander McDougall edited by Janet Cole Sanborn and published by the Great Lakes Historical Society in 1968. There are no comparables online.

Pine Bluffs, North Carolina 1884-1976 compiled by the Pine Bluffs Historical Committee

The History of Parma (Ohio) by Ernest R. Kubasek, 1976

Dogs by Albert Payson Terhune (a good mall seller at a better price than online)

The Dog Book by Albert Payson Terhune and the great Diana Thorne, widely admired for her artistic renderings of animals (again better selling price at the mall).

Wisdom magazine, 1958 (features Ernest Hemingway on the cover, plus an article by him and an article ABOUT him)

Heart’s Ease, a gift book from 1909 by Philips Brooks who was an Episcopal priest who wrote the lyrics to O Little Town of Bethlehem.

The First Christmas, another gift book, this time by Kate Whiting Patch (undated). Victorian and Edwardian gift books have their own special following and sell for more than you might expect, but not on the traditional book sites. I will not be listing either one there.

Blondie and Dagwood paper dolls, including Alexander and Cookie, all with five outfits apiece, plus accessories. I will probably take them to the mall, but I am going to divide them by character and outfits into four separate clear bags which will be mounted on a LARGE cardboard and heat-sealed in a plastic bag. I have a hunch that these are imminently shopliftable, so even if my methodology bombs the taker will have to work much harder to get them out the door.

Other than the chairs, Saturday's estate sales held little excitement. Two of them had been touted as having “lots of books”, but I bought only two books total, both from the same place as the chairs and neither is worth mentioning. That house did have “lots”, just not especially good ”lots” and the other had SOME, all of which were bad. It’s amazing how “lots” and "some” are synonyms in the world of estate sales!

But now I'm thinking about Black Friday and wondering whether I could invoke the furniture gods directly and see if maybe I can scare up a piece of furniture, even if it’s not a chair, before then. It seems a bit presumputous seeing as how I am not an antiques dealer and have no intention of becoming one. It's probably against the rules to transgress unfamilar territory, especially considering my attitude about people selling books who know nothing about books.

But you know what? I think I'm gonna chance it. After all, Eric's dad was an antiques dealer and Eric loves antiques and buys them for the store. That should count for SOMETHING!

Lament

2011-11-18T13:12:00.009-05:00

I was in a great mood yesterday, anxious to take new books to the mall, then head off to the little rural book sale that bans scanners. We arrived at the booth, marveling at how barren it seems with no chair, but the clock was ticking and we had a bit of a distance to travel, so we quickly got over lamenting it and began shelving books. While we were at the task a customer came in and looked around – a true rarity, as most of the time if I’m there they will pass on by. This guy examined the bird bookends I bought at the estate sale a couple weeks ago and asked if I could do any better on the price. I had to say no, as my profit margin was truly the size of a bean. I explained that to him, he responded cordially, and left without buying them .

But no sooner had I turned back to the bookcase when an inner voice screeched in my ear like a siren in the dead of night. Before I even turned around to check I knew – not the birds, but the beautiful Chinese carved soapstone bookends I loved had vanished. I knew they hadn’t sold because I check daily sales online every night. Of course they could have sold earlier in the day, but I knew in my bones that they hadn’t. My subsequent request at the front desk to check the day's log corroborated it.

“Somebody could be walking around with them right now,” the young girl in charge said. “Or they might have ended up in another booth.”

Both options are plausible of course, but I knew that neither one was the case. For the seventh time in a year my booth had been shoplifted. I can’t even explain what this feels like. It’s not just anger – though anger is in there of course. It’s not even just sadness, though that’s in there too. It’s something primal, a personal violation. I know that sounds overly dramatic – they’re just bookends after all, not the Hope Diamond. Their disappearance represents a $50 loss of revenue which, though nothing to sneeze at, isn't the end of the world either. The real thing, the thing that gnaws away at me, is this -- when someone abdicates their own humanity for self-gain they not only lose a piece of their own soul, they snatch a piece of their victim’s soul too. They steal your openness and trust and leave in its place the seeds of cynicism. I don’t want to be a cynic. I really don’t, but I have to say that between the Japanese postcards, Alice Underground, and now the bookends (the three things I had a soft spot for) I’m really struggling.

It’s odd too that of all the things to be taken it was those bookends. Just last Sunday morning when we walked around the lake at Hinkley Nancy mentioned them.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw those Chinese bookends on your blog,” she said. “It reminded me of something funny."

It seems that when Nancy was little she and a gang of neighborhood kids decided it would be fun to have a rummage sale. The only pesky little snag in the grand scheme was their lack of rummage. But they hatched a plan to go door to door with a big red wagon and see if maybe the neighbors would donate some. Turns out they would and it wasn’t long before the wagon abounded with junk of every variety. Only one lone Chinese soapstone bookend, a mottled green in color with a carved vase spilling out a lush plant held any fascination. Nancy, for one, thought it was the most beautiful, exotic thing in this universe. There was a chip to one corner, but even that didn’t take away its luster. Neither did the fact that nobody bought it at the rummage sale. Treasure is treasure whether people get it or they don’t. Years passed and somehow she lost track of the bookend until a couple years ago when she went to Utah for her nephew’s graduation. There, in her niece’s bedroom sat the bookend, still being used and still beautiful in a room that seemed to have sprung up around it, down to the color of the soaring twelve-foot walls

On the way to the sale I told Eric the story and we marveled at how a damaged bookend missing its mate had managed to hang around for decades in the same family when a perfect pair left our company in two weeks. But of course their perfectness is the reason for their departure. Crazy as it sounds though, Nancy’s story ignited the tiniest flame of hope that somehow they’d still be found. As soon as we pulled into the garage after the sale I leaped out of the car and bounded up the stairs to check the daily report, knowing full well what I wouldn’t see but hoping I’d see it anyway. Believe it or not, I actually thought I had.

The second I glanced at the screen the word bookends leaped off the page and into my arms. “YESSSSS!” I shouted down the stairs to Eric. “They sold! They sold!”

But they didn’t.

The guy who’d looked at the bookends with the birds came back and bought them after all.

Do the Book Gods Have Friends?

2011-11-16T11:27:00.009-05:00

Lest you think I fell off the ends of the earth, I didn’t. I just fell into a lot of work. After having been gone two days to Dayton and then with the weekend coming up right after it, I haven’t exactly been burning up the computer over here. Monday I listed some of the new stuff I bought and uploaded to ABE, Biblio, my own website, and Alibris and then starting photographing special titles for upload to same the following day. Yesterday was free listing day on my secret site too, so I had to hunker down and blast as much stuff their way as possible to maximize my discount.

As it turned out, I only worked a half day Monday though because I got a call over the weekend about a collection of books that were supposed to be fabulous. Of course I sallied forth with high hopes, but once again – define fabulous. How can it be that a beautifully appointed home would be furnished with such lackluster books? I would have bought two, but they wanted a hundred dollars each! They were worth $35 and $75 respectively. I also stopped at T.J. Maxx on the way back to get some new socks for the winter. Well, I guess it’s officially Christmas because as I browsed the wares looking for something that would differentiate my socks from Eric’s socks in the dryer what do I hear playing over the sound system but Christmas In Killarney!

WHAAAAAAT? Irish music in T.J. Maxx? Oh well, it was fun to sing along in my head, “It’s nice you know to kiss your beau, and cuddle under the mistletoe. It’s Christmas in Killarney with all of the folks at home!”

Believe it or not, I also got a second call about books yesterday, this time from a young woman who had been charged by her family to get rid of the books owned by her rcently departed aunt. I talked to her a few minutes, but she clearly didn’t have the old stuff I want, so I referred her to Eric. Within an hour she was at the store bearing three big bags of like- new titles, none older than two years. He snapped them up of course, but the big surprise was what he brought me. I am already planning the basket I’m making for the NOBS Book Fair and had been wanting The Autobiography of Mark Twain for it, but haven’t yet seen one at sales. So when he walked in bearing a pristine copy I was so excited I forgot all about how unfair it is that he got books brought to him and I had to work for mine – only there didn’t end up being any mine. This is truly the coolest thing! Happy, happy!

Tonight I have a NOBS book fair meeting and tomorrow is the little rural sale we like because hardly anybody goes to it since they banned scanners. As I’ve said before, it’s never dazzling ( well, one time it was, but that was then and this is the unmagical now), but at least it’s peaceful and you don’t have to sit around for three hours. My expectations are low, but I’m sort of looking forward to it anyway. Then of course it will be estate sale time. The good part this weekend is I don’t have to see the word books in order to go because I need to buy two pieces of furniture which I would like to do before the day after Thanskgiving. We opened our booth last year on that very day and sales were SO GOOD that I’m afraid I’ll get my hopes up too high, but I want everything to look great and well-stocked. Oh, that’s another thing I did – readied a ton of books to take over there tomorrow on the way to the sale. Of course I will buy books if I see good books at the estates, but what I really want this weekend is FURNITURE!

I wonder if there are furniture gods … If there are, you think maybe the book gods know some? Maybe I could slip them a twenty and they could take the furniture guys out for a beer on my behalf.

The Bullish Marketplace: A New Perspective

2011-11-13T08:09:00.005-05:00

The phone rang last night. Just after dinner a volunteer from the Dayton sale called to inform me that I had won an auction. Not auctions. Auction. Singular. I got the pretty leather volume from 1852, Companions of My Solitude. I was happy of course, as this one spoke to me in dulcet tones, but I was oh-so-disappointed over the Steinbeck. And yet I’m not as deflated as you might expect, as I think my bid on the Vonnegut approached the danger zone. In a sense I ended up with a double win – the book gods saved me from myself!.

After I posted yesterday I sorted through the many boxes and isolated all the store stuff which consists of most of what we bought. I wound up with three boxes, two of which are headed to the mall and one small one online. That’s the way it always is though because I don’t list much other than ephemera at the lower end of the spectrum. If it’s not at least a $20-25 book it doesn’t get listed unless I like it a lot, or can sell it on my secret site where I pay no commission. Years ago we sold much more volume, but these days I’m operating on a model that sacrifices quantity for higher selling prices.

Even so, for such an enormous sale I expected to acquire more than I did. But I’m not complaining TOO much, as I excavated several books I had forgotten about, including a wonderful two volume set, the Journals of A.H. Maslow, the famous psychologist noted for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s a pyramid that outlines what a self-actualized person requires to live in harmony with herself. I would try to list them all, but I doubt I can, so just know that it’s a very sensible thing and the guy was no slouch. The set lists for around $125, so I’m even happier with it than before. The other goodie is Springfield Armory; Shoulder Weapons 1795-1968. I have no affinity for weaponry, but over the years I’ve acquired just enough knowledge to let me pick those gun books with the rest of the guys! This one sells for $90 and I paid a modest $3.

I think the thing that gratified me most though was a sleeper I got while trying to wend my way through the boxes, bins, and body parts in the art department. I made it to the fringe where I caught up with Peter, a seller I like from Cleveland. He, too, had failed to negotiate a look at the wares, so we stood at the edge chatting as we flipped through a couple small boxes of art ephemera which also contained literary ephemera for some odd reason. I glanced up once just as he picked an index to the early Paris Review. Oh! I WANTED it, but I went back to my own box and eventually struck gold. I didn’t exactly know it, but I had a hunch that the three soft cover volumes from Sotheby’s, Fine Moderns First Editions from the Collection of Jonathan Goodwin were good. OMG, the guy collected everybody who was anybody and the catalog is peppered with photos and descriptions that would make you want to hock your house to get in on the action. Best of all, the previous owner had penned in the realized prices. I looked the set up on Abe and there are only a few listed, all at $95 by ABAA sellers so I’m settling in at the same price. It won’t be fast sale, but who cares? Meanwhile I might learn a thing or two.

The other thing I got that’s laugh out loud funny is my famous, and even infamous, 1934 gazillion pound Webester's New International Dictionary, Second Edition. I got one last year and had a picture of it on here for some reason and then wound up selling it at the mall. I will probably take this one over there too because it would cost a king’s ransom just to ship it down the street. But what a glorious thing it is! I LOVE this dictionary! I can’t believe I forgot it, as it was one of the first books I chose in the specials room. But that’s what happens when you get brain freeze – you can’t register a thought, much less a memory.

Speaking of the mall, sales have improved a small bit (emphasis on small), but I no longer have a chair again. Yes, the second chair sold Friday. Remember how I was going to pick an uglier one than the first one so it would stick around for customers to sit on as they browsed the lower shelves? Well, so much for that idea. Now I need to buy furniture again. Not only do I need a chair, but I still have space where the immigrant trunk was. I can’t remember if I told you about that, but we had one – really cool too from Scandinavia, hand painted on the front in beautiful script that read North Amerika. Furniture is good for three reasons – when it sells you can make money if you buy it right, it adds interest to your booth and draws in non-bookies, and provides customers with seating and you with display space for special items.

Which is exactly how my beloved Alice Undergound in the slipcase with the color art got stolen!

Bulls In the Book Sale

2011-11-12T11:14:00.006-05:00

Whew! We’re back, but I feel like I’ve been run through a wringer and left out to dry. Overall l would say it was an okay trip, but, as so often happens, it failed to live up to expectations from last year. Everything about it, from the antiques malls, to the hotel, to breakfast yesterday was off-kilter. As for the sale – well, we’ll get to that soon. Meanwhile suffice it to say that when I got home and read the comment by a blog reader who has personal experience with this exact sale I actually snapped back to life long enough to laugh out loud. Do go back to the last post and read the last comment before my reply. You’ll laugh too – unless of course you’re AT the sale when the bulls charge in from Pamploma.

The first thing we did Thursday after lunch at Applebee’s was stop at the antiques malls. Believe it or not, I actually found the booth where I’d seen the first edition Out of Africa last year. Crazy as it sounds, I recognized the metal legs of the display table next to the bookcase. What I didn’t find of course was the book. I did, however, make a couple mall observations. Not only did there appear to be fewer books overall, but fewer dealers selling only books. Consequently, the quality of the available books, with a few exceptions, held all the appeal of a pallet of cheap Chinese imports. So much for scoring bargains.

As soon as we hit Dayton we headed straight to the fairgrounds (oddly located downtown) to check out the state of things. It was five o’clock and already boxes marched in a short line to the front door. We placed ourselves as numbers seven and eight, amazed that last year we didn’t stake out our territory until after dinner and were still closer to the front. A portent of things to come, perhaps? Oh, yeah.

After that we headed over to the Grand Dayton hotel, formerly the Doubletree. We hadn’t even parked the car when the bloom began to fall from that rose too. Goodbye valet parking. Goodbye welcoming cookies. Goodbye friendly, helpful staff. The room was still nice, but goodbye speedy check-out in the morning too. Of course none of this matters that much, but it WAS a disappointment. Dinner at Thai Nine with our friends proved to be the only constant of the trip.

Friday morning we pulled into the fairgrounds at six a.m. only to sit in the car and watch the medical staff shiver across the parking lot on their way to the hospital. There was exactly one car in the lot with someone sleeping in it -- last year you’d have thought it was Motel Six. The line, however, had grown to about fifteen and remained that way for at least half an hour. Little by little new people came, but no one congregated, as it was colder than the back end of Antarctica. We looked around a little, didn’t see anybody we knew and so at seven gave up and drove over to the restaurant by ourselves for breakfast. We were cozily ensconced at a table for two when in came Carol and Ed and a couple we like from Toledo.

“Where were you? We looked for you and finally just came over!” they said.

"Ditto here," we replied. They snagged the last available table for four -- across the room.

By the time we got back to the sale, the sun had finally dragged itself up over the horizon. Time passed slowly, but finally it was ten o'clock and the bulls (that is, the booksellers) who by this time numbered in the hundreds, charged the doors.

“No running! No running, please!” the volunteers hollered. They might as well have saved their voices. The herd was not be deterred.

As always, I ducked into the specials room (See? What did I tell you about my great pronouncements?). Immediately a dealer started grabbing everything without even checking prices. Each time he chose something -- thwack! – onto the stack it decisively went. By the time he thudded three full sets onto a new stack my brain had frozen solider than a Butterball turkey. I guess I recovered, but it’s hard to say whether the books just weren’t all that great, or I blew the first few minutes. By the time I made it out to the stacks the art section was chock-a-block with bins, tubs and crawling bodies. Getting to the tables required steel-toed boots, a walking stick, and a can of pepper spray. Since I lacked any of the above I made a beeline for the old books, only to find that they’ve been moved. By the time I located them a pack of Amish women bearing large bins and boxes surrounded them like a SWAT team. I didn’t wait to see if they’d whip out a scanner or two – I headed off to parts less occupied. In the end I got some stuff, mostly for the mall, but nothing that stands out. In fact, I had to dig around in the boxes to find something worthy of a picture. The one above ought to be good.

By the time I caught up with Eric I felt deflated as an old party balloon. “Okay, “ he said, "you clearly need a break. Let’s go see the auction.”

Well -- this perked me up more than I would have expected. The book I wanted had a detached board which I strongly suspect got that way during the sale. My heart sank like the Titanic until I glanced to my right and saw three books that made my heart stop – a first American edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano; a fabulous hardcover limited edition auction catalog of John Steinbeck’s books and manuscripts, AND the loveliest small leather volume from 1852 called Companions of My Solitude. How had I missed them? I don’t know – I guess sometimes seeing is believing. But here’s the bad part. Of the three the only one that didn’t have a bid was the Steinbeck catalog. Vonnegut had two. I bid conservatively on all three, an approach that worked well last year when I ended up two for two. But I don’t know ….that was then and this is the decidedly less magical now.

I hate to admit it, but I’m actually trying to cut a deal with the book gods as we speak.. Let me have the Steinbeck and Companions of My Solitude and I’ll give up the Vonnegut. I think that’s fair, but so far it's been silence of the lambs over here.

At least I’ll know by tonight. No phone call, no books.

Dayton-Bound!

2011-11-09T12:01:00.003-05:00

I’m absolutely flying today, but a promise is a promise, so here I am revved up like a 60’s muscle car for our trip tomorrow. It’s not that I like to travel – I don’t – but I am so anxious to be back in Dayton to see our friends and also to be surrounded by so many books. This is a huge sale that is handled very well. Everything is categorized with precision and the best part is you get a grocery cart in which to put your stuff. You park it somewhere and volunteers watch over it while you gather. How good is THAT?

I did take some time this morning though to look one last time at their silent auction catalog. Surprise, surprise! Something jumped out at me after all. The opening bid is $50 which is okay seeing as how the book is a leather bound title from the 1700’s. It says it has a repaired hinge which worries me a little, but it might be fine if it’s done well. So maybe, maybe, I’ll be bidding after all. I’d seen it the first time I looked, but for some reason thought it was a modern reprint, as there is one. Now, fingers crossed that it’s esoteric enough to be of no interest to the masses!

Last year when I went to this sale I headed straight for the special priced stuff, but with the quality of the auction items as poor as they are I’m considering jumping into the fray in the main area. The big question is will I have the courage? I often say things like this and then chicken out at the last minute. Actually, I’m wavering as we speak because I just remembered a couple sellers made that choice last Thursday at the big sale I told you about and I found both the Akron book and the German book in the specials room. Oh, what to do? What to do? Fortunately, there are also two huge antiques malls on the way so we’ll stop, and with any luck, find a few bargains there too. Last year I found a first edition of Out of Africa for just $50, but for some idiotic reason didn’t buy it! I keep wondering if it’s still there and if I can find it if it is. Probably not though, huh? :-)

Oh, here’s something to start the trip off well. A long-time picker whose been plying his trade for decades stopped in the store yesterday with a GREAT book. He comes in from time to time, but like the rest of us, struggles to find the quality he enjoyed in the good old days. He actually had two good books, but the one was a 19th century ex-library which I would have bought anyway due to the attractive library bookplate and overall condition. But I couldn’t live with the one flaw – someone had removed a sticker from the bottom of the spine and it had marred the cloth frightfully. So I ended up with the book you see at the top of the page. It’s Western Americana from 1948, a limited first edition signed by the author in a print run of just 1000 copies of which this is #35. It’s in very nice condition too and has great color art at frontis as seen above. The title is Wyoming Cattle Trails by John K. Rollinson, published by Caxton Printers Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho. Most of the few copies on ABE share the same price of $195 which is where I plan to be too.

Okay, time to get cracking here! I need to clean the house (this is a weird thing I feel compelled to do before I set foot out the door to anywhere that involves even one night away) and get my clothes ready, but that’s only because I’ll need dress-up clothes for tomorrow night which requires so many accessories – an extra purse, jewelry, shoes, a different coat etc. etc. So on that note I’m off and running. We’ll be back on Friday night and I’ll tell you all about it either Saturday or Sunday.

Wish me luck!

Catching Up!

2011-11-07T13:21:00.002-05:00

Last week was a whirlwind of activity with the Halloween trip to Michigan, two book sales, and an extremely busy and good sales day on Friday that kept me hopping. If you saw me flying around filling orders you’d think you’d just emerged from a Time Machine and were observing the bookseller circa 2005. I have no idea what sparked it, but I’ll definitely take it, as the mall performed dismally this weekend – the worst since I opened there a year ago this month. I could get crazed about it, but I’d rather think about the surprise collector and the magazines on Friday and the fact that also on Friday I sold a $400 book on ABE purchased from the late, great, and infamous Elmer.

As for the book sales, both were ho-hum, but both also were less well attended than normal, particularly the big one we went to on Thursday night. This used to draw sellers from as far away as Vermont and Pennsylvania, but not anymore. Even the local scanners have dropped off some. There’s any number of reasons for it, but I think what bugs the serious sellers is the rampant pre-picking, the crazy pricing, and the general decline in truly worthy, collectible books. They did have a table of specials and a couple actually were quite good, but the prices were terrifying. My bookseller friend Paul took a flyer and bought one for $50, but only because he wouldn’t mind keeping it for himself. As it turned out, the price was good enough to sell online. But the one I wanted was $100 and what scared me was the fact that even the ex-library discards had been marked to the rafters. Having said that though, Eric made a deal on a 17 volume set about Ohio geneaology which he wanted for the store. The asking price was $135, but somehow he got them for $50. I guess he must have convinced them that online sellers wouldn’t want to deal with them, nor would most buyers. I don’t know – I didn’t get involved in it.

What I did get – and Eric again scores for finding the best underpriced book in the place – is a signed first edition of this VERY scarce Akron title – Pictorial of Akron and Summit County of Yesteryear. I had one once, but never saw another until he came over holding it and said, “Isn’t this a book you like?” The man’s a master of understatement. So for $8 we scored a $125 book. Other than it I got some stuff, but would be hard pressed to tell you what it was without unpacking it. No, that’s not true! I got a German children’s book by Erich Kastner, the same author of the German children’s book I sold earlier this year for $100. This one isn’t a first printing, but neither was that one, though both were from the first edition. Trouble is, I can’t find an early copy to use as a comparable – just paper reprints. What REALLY frosts me though is the way this library and others slap stickers on the faces of older books. I tried so hard to remove it from the delicate paste-on cover art and still it wound up defaced. WHY do they do this???? (see below)

The second sale was on Saturday. The only reason we went is because there wasn’t an estate sale worth touching with a ten-foot bone folder (I know, I know – but I love book repair tools and I never get to work them into a conversation). It’s always been a small affair, but this time it was Lilliputian. The books numbered in the low hundreds and the number of buyers might have been ten. This one never did entice a crowd, but there was a day when two sellers from Pennsylvania never missed it. Eric got maybe ten books for the store and I bought three, all in the $35 range which is good for this sale. I especially like this one pictured below about portrait painters from the Ohio Valley. Oh, I did get one other thing – a horrible allergic reaction to something there. My eyes burned and my sinuses screamed and it didn’t get any better until late in the afternoon. I have no idea what it was, but it sure made me sorry I made the effort.

This week we are going again to the sale we went to last year in Dayton. I am not holding out a lot of hope though because they published a list of silent auction books that are anything but glorious. Last year I won two items – that gorgeous architecture set and the beautiful (and still not listed) copy of Emily Dickinson’s herbarium published by Princeton University. I doubt I’ll bid this year which means we better make it up in underpriced hidden treasures. It probably won’t prove to be a money-maker, but we’re going there also because we love staying at the beautiful downtown Dayton Grand Hotel (which last year was a Doubletree) and having dinner in the historic district with our friends from Medina, Charlie and Mary Lynn. So it’s a little mini-getaway as well as a business trip.

I’ll try to write another post before then, but I am working frantically to list or store all the books I have acquired lately so my office can return to its former beauty before the next onslaught (providing there is one). At any rate, I’ll at least post something small. Promise.

Medievalists -- Oh My Indeed!

2011-11-04T14:17:00.004-05:00

This is utterly amazing. AMAZING!! Remember last month when the guy ran across my blog about the Chinese autograph book and called wanting to buy it? Well, it happened again today, only this time it’s the medievalist magazines I bought at a book sale in Cincinnati, Ohio a year ago last summer when we were there for our wedding anniversary. I wrote about them some time after that and then a few weeks ago submitted a variation of the post to the NOBS newsletter where it appears in the current edition. So it’s funny that this happened right now, especially because, like the autograph book, the magazines have never been listed.

Again, I answered the phone to a very nice man, who told me he chanced on the blog through google and couldn’t believe his eyes, as he’s been searching for a copy for years (I have two). I know for a fact it wasn’t an exaggeration either because The Knight Errant only had four issues of 500 copies each before going belly-up. I’m telling you, this was one déjà vu experience! As with the Chinese autograph book, he badly wanted them and I badly wanted to be sure that he was the right guy to have them. His interest lies in the cover art which was rendered by the architect Bertram Goodhue who designed the capitol building in his state. Not only does he admire Goodhue who worked on the designs of several New York City Episcopal churches with Ralph Adams Cram who himself designed the imposing Cathedral of St. John the Divine and was involved with the magazines as well, but he knew enough about Goodhue to park me in a chair. As you may recall, I do not sit down to talk on the phone. Unless the caller offers up something so fascinating that I’m mesmerized I prefer to wear out the floorboards.

Well, I was mesmerized all right – in fact, I was fairly stupefied. As the words, the anecdotes, the stories of his own travels and reading to learn about Goodhue and the medievalists poured out I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the book gods had not only given him a nudge, but had even dialed my number for him. The call came in this morning -- hours ago -- but I’m still reeling from the serendipity of finding yet again another serious collector whose passion for a rare item transcends monetary value.

Could a bookseller BE any happier?

P.S. To read more about the The Kinight Errant refer to the post of Thursday, August 12, 2010.

Halloween and the Aftermath

2011-11-01T09:53:00.007-05:00

We’re back from Michigan! Got in last night around six and, as predicted, crashed on the couch for the duration of the evening. We didn’t even pass out candy this year to the trick-or-treaters because we were literally Halloweened OUT! The pumpkin carving proved to be its usual annual success, as Tyler, who is eight, pronounced Papa the best pumpkin carver in the world. The little one, who is two, literally grabbed the biggest pumpkin we brought and bestowed upon it a hug so enthusiastic it’s a wonder it didn’t explode in orange profusion all over the beige and white kitchen. The amazing thing was that he stood on a chair and scooped out the insides for over an hour – THIS from a kid who doesn’t normally stay still for two seconds. At nine o’clock that night he was still wide awake crouching like a downhill skier on the edge of a sofa cushion screaming “Tree! Five! GO!”, before leaping onto a row of three pillows he’d lined up on the floor for a crash landing.

The next morning bright and earlywe headed to school, about a block away, to watch the entire kindergarten through fifth grade march around in their costumes. By far the funniest was a pint-sized Dorothy from Oz in a blue gingham pinafore and sparkly ruby-red slippers which sported clearly much-loved little heels. No braids and Kansas corn for this one! She flipped the ends of a long blond wig with one hand and toted Toto in a designer bag with the other. After the parade made two revolutions we left for breakfast at Coney Island around ten, came back to collect Tyler at noon, and then headed off to the Toledo Zoo. Halfway there (it takes an hour from Ann Arbor) the sky darkened, the clouds opened, and rain fell coldly and miserably. But did that deter the little zoo-goers? No it did not, nor did the fact that there were only six cars in the entire parking lot. Given a choice we’d have declined the adventure, but where the little people goeth there goeth Gran and Papa. As it turned out, Tyler was thrilled because we had two umbrellas in the car and he had never before used an umbrella. Also, the lack of an audience meant that not only did the animals come out, but did so spectacularly. Our little one screamed with delight at the sight of a mother elephant and her baby up close and personal, so of course that made all the difference. How can you complain about being wet, cold, windblown and miserable when a wild-haired two-year old hollers, "Hi babeeee! Hi babeeee!" and throws a baby elephant extravagant kisses.

Of course a trip to Michigan invariably extracts a price of another kind in the form of orders which arrive in our absence and demand immediate attention. I easily gathered everything (ABE and Biblio) except for one piece of railroadiana that I KNEW I had, but couldn’t find. After much running up and down the stairs Eric insisted I stop looking and have a glass of wine while he made spaghetti. Too tired to argue, I finally gave in and sat at the island rending and gnashing while he cooked. I had had two similar titles of this manual from 1944, each with some of the same, but also some different, numbers of time control mechanisms. An order for one of them came in several weeks ago when our daughter Caitie was here and she somehow noticed that I had matched the wrong copy to the order -- which was easy to do given all those wretched numbers. I remembered going back for the right one, but had no memory of what I did with the wrong one which was NOW ORDERED!!!!.

First thing this morning I popped out of bed at five and went off in search with new vigor, only to turn up empty again. So I wrapped the orders that needed to go, including one that came through while I was wrapping, and Eric bore them away while I sat glumly in front the computer wondering what I had ever done to cause the book gods to retaliate by wrecking our Halloween afterglow with this much STRESS!

And then -- out of nowhere -- came a memory. Though blurry around the edges, it filled me with new hope. Had I placed the wrong book on top of the computer tower so I could return it to its storage box? I jumped up, removed an 1898 paperback called Secret Service by General La Fayette C. Baker, a beautiful 1920’s vintage book about the Columbia River which shouldn’t even BE up here, an envelope of postal ephemera, a picture of me and my writing group at Dandi’s daughter’s wedding, a coffee mug with dregs from Sunday morning, and a new box of paperclips. And there it was.

Coded Carrier Control System for Use with Time Code Control Systems Type L -- Forms 504-B, 504-C, 506 and 506-A (Manual 507)

Peace reigns.

Raining On Elbert's Parade

2011-10-30T09:21:00.003-05:00

It’s becoming a tiresome routine. Every Saturday morning I rise with the chickens and tear around getting ready to head to Akron for an estate sale only to come home asking myself why I even bothered. This week the newspaper ad promised collectible Roycrofter books and implied that some were bound by Elbert Hubbard himself. Of course you KNOW what a crush I have on Elbert, so I was fairly atwitter. Ever since Thursday all I could think about were the gorgeous leather-bound set of Little Journeys and lovely limp suede books marked at the back “Bound by Elbert Hubbard.” As it turned out, my imaginary parade and last week’s bubble had a lot in common. You won’t believe it --I STILL can’t believe it – but among the “treasures” were the ubiquitous Notebook of Elbert Hubbard in the cheap edition for $65 (I have a mint condition leather-bound one in a box which doesn’t sell for that much!) and various other titles that looked like they'd been attached to the back of a plow and drug through a soy bean field. Actually, they did have one that might have been okay had it not been for the plow and field thing, but the rest were absolute junk, most bearing three-figure price tags.

The other thing they’d advertised was local history, so of course bringing up the end of the Elbert parade in my head was Grismer’s hefty red Akron and Summit County. After much searching for anything with the word Akron on it I finally found two common-as-dirt titles on the coffee table. Of course all this looking for what wasn’t there cost me time, so I was late perusing the shelved books. Eric had already chosen Theodore Roosevelt’s two volume set of African Game Trails published by Scribner’s, but having had the brown first edition of 1910 in the past I liked it, but didn’t swoon over it. I made only two selections myself, both of which list conservatively in the $45-50 range – a first edition of Harry Franck’s Roving Around Southern China from 1925 and a first edition British Christmas anthology from 1928 published by Cresset Press (see pale striped book in picture above).

The British book would never have jumped out at me had I not had it once before – found in the many thousands of books bought from the much discussed Elmer. I never listed it though because its condition reeked of plow and field, but I HAD looked it up and knew that it was scarce. While less than perfect, this copy is actually quite good even though the cloth binding shows some darkening at the top edge and a few small stains. The cloth used on this book feels like fabric, so I couldn’t try my luck with chemical cleaner. Instead I went over it with a document pad which removed a surprising amount of dirt, so I think it will be fine, as other dealers, including the Strand, seem to have copies suffering from the same problem. The paper is heavy and the art period-pleasing, especially the wood engraving by the intrepid English traveller and diarist, Celia Fiennes. (see below).

But I think what I like best of what I bought are a couple items produced after World War II by the Japan Travel Board. They don’t sell for a whole lot, but I’m charmed by a lovely book on the tea culture and an exquisite set of eight postcards in their original wrapper depicting geishas in training. I also ended up with a little hardware – two sets of bookends for the mall. Of the two, I prefer the Chinese carved soapstone pair (see photo below), though they’re not as pricey as the birds. Interestingly enough, I looked both sets over carefully, thought they were too expensive for resale, and started to walk away when the estate sale worker came over and asked if I would take them both if the price were less. Rarely does this happen on the first day, so I said I might and we quickly agreed on a deal that worked for us both.

It’s funny --I started writing this in a negative frame of mind, but as the words appeared on the page I realized that the sale, while not all I’d hoped for, wasn’t a total loss either Little by little I got a bit more chipper and now I’m actually happy as a clam, as we are off to Michigan as soon as I get ready for Halloween high-jinks with the little guys. This afternoon we’ll carve pumpkins and eat Halloween cookies with neon orange frosting for dessert and tomorrow we’ll all go to Tyler’s school (baby Dylan gets the day off from daycare) for the costume parade and then we’re headed en masse to the Toledo zoo for the afternoon. Tomorrow night is trick-or-treat – Dylan’s first time and I can tell you right now it will be wild and woolly.

Sadly, Gran and Papa won’t be there to see it though. We’ll be back in Ohio, comatose in the family room by eight!

Flamingo's Magic Kingdom

2011-10-28T09:40:00.007-05:00

Okay then, no magazines. Nobody wants to hear about them, so I won’t utter the word again in this post. I do have something interesting to talk about, but I’m in a Friday frame of mind which means I want to play more than I want to work. As it turns out, my buddy, Sunday Morning Joe, whom I haven’t mentioned in a while, provided me with a ticket to endless amusement yesterday. It seems that he and a neighbor who lives behind him share a small bit of woods. Rarely do they see one another, but they keep in constant communication via an old rusty mailbox conveniently located in – the woods! Don’t laugh because sometimes there’s even cookies involved. There’s a lot of other stuff in the woods too– a clock (which actually works) nailed to a tree, a bag for collecting the neighbor’s dog’s lost tennis balls (nailed to the tree), and a very old sign that stands NEXT to the tree bearing a secret word that I dare not utter for fear of unleashing mystical and dangerous powers. Presiding over this hidden kingdom stands a tall formidable pink plastic flamingo.

Now this is not any ordinary flamingo. This flamingo is so special that her name (yes, it has been determined that she’s a girl) is Flamingo. That’s right – the one and ONLY Flamingo. Lest you think she’s just a cheap pink floozie, think again – Flamingo just returned from a trip to Australia. Yes, she really did. And you know what THATcosts these days. The downside is that now that she’s seen Sydney it’s hard to keep her back in the woods. So Sunday Morning Joe and his neighbor decided to send her on virtual trips. You’d think, jet-setter that she is, she’d consider this second rate, but Flamingo is a bird blessed with a quirky sense of humor. She stands back there next to the sign with the perilous word on it laughing her beak off as real snail mail postcards from HER volley across the miles to Sunday Morning Joe and the neighbor from all over the world. SMJ just got one from Oman. This is arranged of course through the aid of a network of secret agents (one of whom is now officially me) which means that SMJ and his neighbor don't get the same ones. His operatives send to her, hers send to him.

Of course the obvious problem with me being an operative is that I rarely get to Oman anymore, though I AM going to Dayton in a couple weeks which could be good, but, sadly, that’s the full extent of my foreseeable exotic travel. SO after thinking hard on this deficit I realized that I could actually outdo those frequent fliers thanks to something I have up my bookseller sleeve that these other agents lack – a stack of vintage post cards from all over the world! What this means is that now Flamingo no longer must confine herself to real time travel. She can TIME TRAVEL. Every Friday she will send a card to Sunday Morning Joe’s neighbor with updates on bygone events. The first one, from 1940’s Hawaii, left this morning. You’ll note that Flamingo realized she’d need proof of her abilities to zoom back in time so, as you can see from the photo above, she made sure I included pictures of her in action. So far she's strolled beneath the palm trees in 1947 Hawaii, led the Victory Parade in Paris on July 14, 1919, and hung out at an English castle with some boring Edwardian ladies in big hats.

I must confess though that fun as this has been, a wave of pure envy crashed over me this morning as I stood at the patio doors surveying my own little kingdom. I have a lake, trees, a stone path, and even a slice of cemetery. But, alas and alack, no flamingo, no mailbox, no clock and no sign with a dangerous word on it. Not even any cookies. For a moment I pondered where one might buy a pink plastic flamingo when suddenly two deer, one enormous, loped around the headstones from afar and sprinted into the yard. The male of course tucked right into his breakfast of green ivy sprinkled with raindrops, but the female stopped dead in her tracks and looked me straight in the eye.

“Okay,” she said, in a rather aggressive tone. “Here’s the deal. You can have a Wal-Mart flamingo, or you can have me. This yard’s not big enough for both of us.”

Well, when you put it like that … okay then. I’ll just play with the postcards.

Magazines and Baskets = BUSY!

2011-10-25T13:51:00.003-05:00

As it turned out, I had no time to play with the basket stuff at all yesterday, as I had to get the 26 Spur magazines ready to ship. This meant pressing a few creased corners, cleaning them all with Clean Cover gel, and writing a detailed invoice because their prices ranged from $20 to $16 each. All told, they added up to around $500, but I discounted to $400, then added Ohio sales tax and shipping. They’re very large magazines, so they weighed in at around 25 pounds. I had sixty-five of them to begin with, but I sold fifteen from my ebay store back when it was fun to sell there, plus seven more on ABE. I also sold six to this same collector online and a dozen to him in person. A couple summers ago he passed through the area on business and stopped at our store to pick them up after we’d discussed them over the phone. I still have nine left after giving one to a blog reader yesterday.

Anyway, it ended up being quite a job, but of course it was worth it. I know a lot of sellers hate magazines because they take up a lot of room, require more work to sell, and can be slow to move. But I love them – if they’re the right ones – and am willing to go the extra mile because it’s a such pleasure to handle them. I bought the Spurs at auction in 2006 for $150 for the lot, got my money back in six months, and made a very nice profit. Would I buy them again? You bet I would, but I doubt I will ever see that kind of quantity again. Most sellers who list magazines online haven’t a clue how to do it which is why the myth that you can’t sell magazines on the book sites persists. The truth is you CAN, but only if you’re willing to do the work.

The next thing I need to do today is get the mall books ready, so I can drop them off tomorrow before we go the NOBS board meeting. I planned to do it this morning, but then I sold over the phone (no commission – YAY! ) the R.E. Lee Pultizer Prize Edition set I showed you last week and was so downright tickled over it that I decided I needed a reward. So I got out all the basket stuff and my art supplies and made a grand mess all over my wrapping bench. But the good news is the basket’s done and I even made a card which is pictured below. It’s constructed from yellow cardstock, art paper, tissue and a napkin. The portion to the left is raised due to layers and layers of paper, but the whole thing is very textural overall. After finishing it it struck me that I can make something to frame for my office. When I tried before I somehow got intimidated and decided I could only work on a bandbox, but now I think I can do it. Maybe …

So that’s what’s going on here today. If you would like to talk about selling magazines we can do it – just let me know, either here, at my website http://www.garrisonhousebooks.com/ , or at my email address tessk@zoominternet.net. If I don’t hear from anybody on the subject I’ll assume you either know or don’t care about it. I do have something else to tell you, so it won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t share my passion for paper.

Either way, we’ll talk.

Baskets, Books, Fleas & a Wink from Biblio

2011-10-24T09:42:00.006-05:00

Yesterday was fun. Nancy needs a gift basket for a silent auction fundraiser at the charter school for which she is Director of Communications. It’s a great cause, as the school focuses on children with autism, especially those with Asberger’s. The money goes toward field trips, so we were pretty jazzed to see if we could outdo past efforts. Nancy is the QUEEN of shopping – she could ferret out a giveaway at Tiffany’s – while I am chief basket builder and decorator. Together we’re unstoppable. We hit on the idea of “cozy” and, as luck would have it, I happened to have three gorgeous, seemingly unread cozy mysteries by Laura Childs all set in a tea shop. So we knocked ourselves out buying a vintage china tea cup and saucer, a pretty tin of Earl Grey tea, scone mix, berry jam, cookies, and even tea candy, though neither of us has e a clue if the latter’s a good thing or a bad one. I may run out and get a couple more items if needed, but otherwise I get to play with all the pretty stuff today. I think I’m going to make a collage card too as I did for the NOBS basket, so I’ll show you the finished products as soon as I'm done.

Before embarking on yesterday’s mad shopping trip Eric and I went to the Medina flea market around 7:30 just after the weak sun lazily stretched itself across the horizon. On the way there we discussed how strange it is that this flea market seemed to be fading away and now is back to its former once a month schedule. Even the outside vendors were set up, which earns them a gold medal for bravery in my book, as the roofs of the buildings at the fairgrounds were iced with a scrim of frost. Interestingly enough, we almost immediately heard a dealer telling some customers that people are fleeing ebay in droves and going back to the live flea markets and antiques shows instead. About an hour later we heard the same thing from another dealer. Immediately I made the connection to the recent poor attendance at the two formerly good book sales I told you about last week. Something does seem to be changing in the marketplace, but I still can’t get a handle on what it is or what it means.

The good part is I made a couple amazing buys. One guy had a western Americana collection that was jaw-dropping were it not for the fact that even outside the mustiness sent me into a sneezing fit. I would have taken every single book he had (there were about 15), but no way could I do it under the circumstances. After that I felt like maybe we’d just walked away from the only good books in the place, but not so. Not so! For eight dollars I bought three items, including a scarce 1929 booklet published by the Cuyahoga Falls (Ohio) Chamber of Commerce to entice home buyers to settle there. A local long-time store has it listed for $67, but I will want to research it a bit more,as that seems a tad pricey to me. The other two things I found were books – an 1887 Macmillan edition of John Brown at Oxford in a pretty decorative binding and a 1928 copy WITH its dustjacket of Thornton Wilder’s Pultizer prize-winning The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It's not a first – the first came out in November for the Christmas season of 1927 and was reprinted regularly from that point on. Mine is a 14th , but only dates from May, 1928. So all told, it’s a nice early one in very good condition. I love the way it feels, the way it looks, the entire “isness” of it.

Online sales remain draggy, BUT I am happy, happy, happy because I sold Tasha Tudor’s Becky’s Christmas which was pictured here last week AND my customer who inquired about the Spur magazines is taking 26 of them! Yesterday fizzled at the antiques mall, but Friday proved good and Saturday VERY good, as the normal array of $15-30 stuff was augmented by the sale of a signed first edition of a history of Elyria, Ohio for $75 and a folio-sized set of prints of WWII aircraft (paintings) for an additional $75.

AND biblio must have overheard my wallflower comment because they tossed a me a little wink last night in the form of an order for an old yearbook I forgot I even had.

Once again, life is good in Ohio.

Spurred On

2011-10-22T11:37:00.005-05:00

I guess I should warn you that I’m a tad cranky today, but who knows, I may work myself out of it just by talking to you. The thing is, we headed toward Akron in the dark this morning for an estate sale which promised a library and delivered a shelf at Goodwill. The house sat back on a major road and was impossible to find because it’s one of the few detached single-family homes in an area rife with condo developments. When we finally did locate it (after I jumped out of the car in the dark to read the number) we were very early and for an impossibly long time the only people there other than our friend Darwin. He’s the guy I met back in the ‘70’s when he was all the rage for having turned antique Amish quilts into wall art. I wrote several articles for various publications about him and then never ran into him again until 25 years later when we started doing estate sales. All told, if you’re stuck waiting in the dark for a couple hours for an estate sale to open Darwin’s a good guy with whom to do it.

But even so, the grass was sodden from all the rain this week, so my feet got drenched immediately and then it felt like I had two blocks of ice attached to my ankles. The house was quite interesting though, an early ranch, maybe from the 20s, outfittedwith many classical appointments including exterior dentil molding, crown molding in the formal rooms a foot deep, built-in china closets, and a covered patio with columns. But here’s the funny part – though the furnishings and accessories were lovely and at least vintage, if not antique, they somehow managed to exude a uniform blandness. It wasn’t just me who thought this either because the antiques guys definitely weren’t whirling around singing Oh Happy Day.

But the books. Oh,the sad and sorry books. Two lovely built in bookcases with rounded tops and what do they hold but a shelf of Harvard Classics, several Williamsburg coffee table books, a couple National Geographic coffee table books, a set of the ubiquitous Durants and several sets of beat-up, worn-out, terrible, awful, no good, very bad copies of cheaply bound classics all priced at $5 EACH and described as “a lovely selection.” Needless to say, zero sold. On the coffee table, however, sat the deluxe version of the American Heritage Audubon set from the 60’s in fine condition– two oversized brown volumes in the dusty rose decorative slipcase with the dusty rose ribbon markers and lift. But they had them priced at $100 which is the absolute most they’d fetch in today’s market and that doesn’t even take into consideration the cost of commission and shipping! I dislike this particular estate sale company with a purple passion because they act like everything they have is rare and wonderful when it’s most emphatically NOT. You can actually spend less and do better with the two elite firms. Needless to say, we bought nothing.

On the way home Eric spotted a sign for a book sale at the Fairlawn library. It had already been in progress for an hour, so of course hope and reality immediately met in a head-on collision. I did, however, buy a large Chinese-English dictionary which I just this minute discovered lists for at least $50. I also just a few minutes ago took a call from a customer who works for a prestigious auction house. He’s a collector of early Spur magazines, a publication aimed at the wealthy (my issues are all from the 30’s) and cover fine homes, high society, deluxe travel, show dogs, show horses, art, antiques, and the all-around Good Life. For some reason he never sees them despite being being in the antiques business. They aren’t really all that common, but I’ve had lots of them, primarily because I bought them in large groupings. I think I’ve sold him a dozen or more over the years. During the Magical Makeover I found an additional 36 and put two on ABE which caught his eye. He bought one just now and wants a list of the rest before I ship. So between the dictionary and the Spurs I’m happier than I was when I started this. Which is good because this week’s sales have been lackluster. Even the trusty ABE sent me orders for cheap old stuff I would never buy today. As for Biblio – forget what I said last week about suddenly being the popular girl.

Turns out, I’m not even a wallflower at the Friday night sock hop.

Of Monsoons and Bubbles

2011-10-20T09:46:00.006-05:00

As predicted, the rain fell steadily all day long yesterday. You’d think it was Ireland minus the sea and the mountains – that is, you would until it was time to go to the sale. Then it turned into Vietnam during monsoon season. An hour’s drive awaited us, so we left a little earlier than normal even though we harbored no illusions about being first in line. We’ve never been among the first five at this one, but it doesn’t matter because once inside everyone spreads out. Normally we shoot for a two and a half hour wait, but the weather cut it back to two hours. But guess what? We were the first and only people in line for the entire first hour!

Always this sale is packed, primarily with Columbus dealers, but the minutes ticked by and at forty-five minutes to showtime only three additional people had shown up – one a scanner and the other two a couple of long-time dealers whom I know from NOBS but who live in the Columbus area. It wasn’t until twenty minutes before the doors opened that the rest of the attendees straggled in hauling dripping bins and tubs. The total number of people in line at the final bell was around twenty – a decrease so significant it couldn’t help but catch your attention. What’s interesting is that the turn-out exactly replicated that of last Friday night’s sale when I blamed the sparse attendance on the fact that there had been two significant sales that same week. Now I’m beginning to wonder if some other force is at work here. Yes, the rain may have been a factor, but I have been at sales when the roads resembled skating rinks and still people huddled against the library wall two or three hours in advance. I’m not ready to make any grandiose assessments here , but I do think this deserves careful watching if it continues.

As always, we headed first for the specials table. Two second later -- POP! Bye-bye pink and gold bubble. Not only was the specials table not special, but even the committee couldn’t warm up to their choices. Nothing exceeded $25 with the exception of a first edition Beatrix Potter which lacked a spine strip, was worn through at the corners and had a wobbly binding. They wanted $100 for that one, but I doubt it’s going to happen any time soon. Eric bought a couple minor things for the store from there, but I hit the stacks, as did the vast majority of the “crowd”. Right from the get-go I knew we’d score little to nothing exciting and I was absolutely right. Browsing was a breeze though , as everyone was polite, including the scanners. It’s been our experience that this is invariably the case unless you are in northeastern Ohio, home of the crazies and the brave who endure them.

Primarily I bought for the mall, but I did score a Foxfire magazine from 1974 that’s actually a book that became the issue for the winter quarter. I haven’t had a copy since 2008, so didn’t expect much price-wise, but amazingly, sellers are still offering it in the $45-50 range. I also bought a half dozen fine condition books from a nature series that does well in a retail setting. But here’s the real score of the night. This one is so freaking crazy you are not going to believe it. We got an enormous set of books in mint condition, a series from the early 1950's comprised of “The Works of” various famous, classic authors in a handsome binding, all unread and crisp as new for …. are you ready for this? – FIVE DOLLARS FOR ALL OF THEM! I am not kidding, we truly bought 54 books for five dollars. (See photo above, though not all are visible in the wooden crate)

No, the pink and gold bubble didn’t reemerge from the ether. And, no, I didn’t feel as though we came anywhere near the magical sale of a few years ago. But we had fun, experienced zero stress, and made some good deals. All told, the book gods repaid last year’s selfless dedication to NOBS in spades.

In A Bubble Looking Out

2011-10-19T08:27:00.006-05:00

It’s six-thirty a.m. as I write this and a steady rain drums the roof. The sun isn’t up yet, but it’s clear the sort of day it will be – dark and rainy, a day to spend, ideally, reading by the fire. I woke at four-thirty, so got up, made some coffee and a pumpkin bagel and finished reading The Paris Wife, the story of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson. I had assiduously ignored this book even though the author, Paula McClain, is from Cleveland and I have always been enamored of the Lost Generation. But it’s precisely my interest in the topic and the sheer volume of books I’ve read about it that made me recoil from a fictionalized account. In the end though I’m glad I capitulated – it’s masterful.

Last night I went to dinner at the Asian bistro uptown on the square with my friend Jessica (Thai curry with chicken and red sauce) which turned out to be a rather merry event. It’s good to look in the mirror at my dressed up self once in awhile just to know that that verrsion of me still hangs around on the periphery. But there will be no dressing up today and certainly no lingering over wine. I’m gearing up as we speak for a whirlwind of activity. First, we’re going to avail ourselves of early voting around noon and then hit the antiques mall with the weeks’s new offerings before heading off to the fourth book sale in a week’s time. This one is rather far away, so the crazies don’t infiltrate, a fact which in itself makes it worth the trip.

My history with this sale borders on both the neurotic and the mythical. Every year when it rolls around a bubble of optimism forms around me, shimmering in shades of iridescent pink and gold. That is, until I get real and remember that only ONCE was it ever magical. Most of the time it’s so-so and a few times it’s been downright wretched. But one year, maybe four or five years ago, I hauled home so many treasures it’s permanently engraved on my psyche -- angling books, one of which sold for $375, New York fashion catalogs from the 1920’s, the ENTIRE SET of Nancy Drew books from the 60’s, an innocuous-looking book about the Beach Boys that sold for $75 -- and that’s just what I can remember. Last year I didn’t go because it coincided with a NOBS board meeting and I responded (at least I like to think so) to my higher angels in making the choice. But if I’m totally honest about it, the reason I bring that up now is to remind the book gods that past goodness deserves a reward tonight. Yeah, I know, bad karma. But there you have it.

Of course they say that lightning never strikes the same place twice anyway. When it comes to buying books I honestly do think it’s true. It reminds me of this antiques mall in Toledo we used to stop at on the way home from Michigan when we visited out oldest daughter and her family. The first time we went I bought half a dozen books so astounding I thought for sure I’d hit the mother lode of literature. As it turned out, I didn’t discover dirt, much less gold. We bought many books there until it closed, but never again did I get one even half as good as any from that first time. So the fact is, I’m more than likely going to crash and burn tonight.

But until I do, the view from the bubble remains dangerously rosy.

P.S. Photo below of Hadley Richardson Hemingway from Carlos Bakers' Hemingway biography as per comment to post.

Survival!

2011-10-16T09:42:00.011-05:00

I was going to post yesterday, as Friday night we attended book sale number three, but the sheer number of books from it all threatened to turn my office into its former disreputable self. After the Magical Makeover there is no way I’m about to be surrounded by leaning towers of tomes again. So I sorted it all, packed the store stock and moved it to the garage, took the mall books to the basement for processing and the rest (the smallest number) up to the office where I began listing them. I wish I could tell you that they’re all dazzling (some aren’t bad), but the Jalna novels pictured in my last post remain my favorites. Guess what though? Yesterday they sold to a blog reader – all sixteen of them which turned out to be the full set. I couldn’t be more tickled because I LOVE them and know they’ve found the world’s best home.

Friday’s night’s sale is usually one I like, but this time it fell as flat as champagne left uncorked overnight. The weather was cold with a strong wind which precluded our usual walk around the lake across the street from the library. But we did repair to a coffee shop with Paul and had a rollicking time sharing growing-up-Catholic stories. We both lived in Akron then so a lot of the landmarks matched, despite the fact that I’m five years older than he. Little did we know that while we were laughing in blissful ignorance over our mutual fall from grace, back at the library foment brewed. As several libraries have done around here, this one adopted the number system to control the line. It should have worked fine, but apparently didn’t. The three of us were numbers two, three and four, but the number one spot apparently became a bone of contention. Two of the crazies, only one of whom actually was acting crazy this time, got into a verbal sparring match which almost landed the aggressor on the curb when the sale's overseer had to break it up. Drama does add spice, but I’m delighted to have missed it.

Oddly enough, the crowd was way down, perhaps because everyone was spent, both financially and physically, from the previous two days. You would think this would be good, but it actually made little difference, as Paul, Eric and I, and one dealer from Columbus were the only non-scanners in the place. Plastic tubs are banned in the sale rooms, but the new volunteers didn’t seem to know how to .enforce it which meant the aisles resembled obstacle courses. As usual, I headed to the specials room and stayed there until the tension eased off. Always we have been able to buy at this sale with confidence no matter what the price on the book, but our long-standing comfort zone collapsed like a tower of alphabet blocks. I realized it immediately when I picked up a book about the early days of the Shaker Heights rapid transit system and spotted its $35 price tag. I’ve had this book twice and the second time sold it for exactly that amount. From then on I bought carefully, but, even so, paid $20 too much for an art book I’ve had in the past. Fortunately, I more than made up for it on the R.E. Lee set featured in the main photo above.

When we finally got over to the main room the crowd (such as it was) had thinned and it was possible to walk around without stepping over tubs, or in my clase, slipping in behind them. I found two signed first edition children’s books, one a winner of the Kate Greenaway Prize, and a nice copy of Tasha’s Tudor’s Becky’s Christmas which is not often seen unless it’s an ex-lib. But, even with all of that, the evening seemed painted in shades of grey and muddied ochre. A woman I had never seen before lugged three enormous bags of books to the check-out only to ask where she might sort them.

“Sort them? Why would you need to do that?” the volunteer asked.

“So I can decide if I want them.”

“Why would you pick them if you’re not sure you want them?” (Great question!)

“Because I have to scan them.”

The volunteer, thoroughly baffled, reluctantly consented and off went the woman and her bulging bags of books to the narrow hallway leading to the exit where she promptly plopped down on the floor, whipped out her scanner, and created a whole new obstacle course. Over an hour into the sale and a mountain of books that others might have actually purchased wound up discarded in a heap on the floor. The sight of them filled me with an overwhelming sense of desolation.

But now on this Sunday morning I feel better. As always, once I gained perspective and realized that I did better than I felt I had, hope blossomed again. In addition to the children’s books mentioned above, I got the gorgeous four volume set of Freeman’s R.E. Lee in the Pultizer Prize Edition from 1936 and a six volume boxed set of Andre Norton’s Witch World series published by Ace in the 60’s replete with its scarce Witch World map. So, in the end, I am ready to face another round of book sales 21st century style.

Which is fortunate because several dot the calendar this week.

Book Battle Warriors!

2011-10-14T09:24:00.003-05:00

Well, here I am again – battleworn and weary from an incredible 12 hour day of book sales which began at 6:30 a.m. when we left our house to 6:30 p.m. when we returned to it. To give you an idea of my exhaustion I was asleep on the couch by eight, woke up at midnight, and staggered upstairs not be heard from again until 6:30 this morning. That’s an hour and a half past my usual wake-up time, so I had to hustle like a used car salesman to get the orders wrapped – two day’s worth because we had no time to ship yesterday.

The first sale, made tolerable only due to breakfast with our seller friends Paul, Carol, and Ed, was akin to sharing a pile of glowing embers in book sale hell with the people who drive you the craziest. Had it not been for the pre-sale conviviality I think I would have so thoroughly self-destructed I wouldn’t have left behind a speck of dust. Crowds, hordes, and mobs, scanners blazing like six-guns, ran around like a pack of frantic ants after somebody kicked the anthill, each lugging at least two plastic bins or Rubbermaid tubs, used of course to thoroughly block the aisles. The volunteers worked hard to get them to take their books to the holding station, but it was about as effective as trying to get feral cats to eat out of the palm of your hand. Whaaaat??? Stop the scanfest for two seconds??? Not a chance!

The funny part was the books which, despite their number, consisted of three-quarters well-used ex-library copies and the rest titles as ubiquitous as the common cold. Eric bought some military and fishing stuff for store stock and I bought exactly one thing, though I do believe it was the best thing in the whole place – 16 volumes of Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna Novels in the Whiteoak edition from the 40’s replete with their hard-to-find dustjackets (see photo of sampling). I had had a smaller set of six, also published by Little Brown in the 40’s, but with different dustjackets and sold them for $65 on April 9th of this year. So, not a bad buy! While Eric checked us out I chatted with an elderly man who commented that he has seen us at sales quite a lot and was amazed at how calm we are.

“This is very undignified,” he said, nodding at the swarm. “But I notice you never participate. Are you a book dealer?”

At that moment I think an angel got its wings. Oh, listen to THIS! Now I’m reduced to quoting from the most treacly Christmas movie of all times.

On to the next sale then! Last spring we had a lovely time there, but this was about as lovely as a tar pit. The same gang from the morning, plus many more, prompted the volunteers to make the same old stern speech about fighting. But the crowd didn’t bother me here, as we headed straight to the specials room and stayed there until after the natives had calmed down. The problem was that all the beautiful books from last time were replaced by the wonkiest bunch of stuff I ever saw and priced to the heavens. Here are a few examples – a ratty copy of the Holland volume from the My Travel Ship set priced at $24, Cherry Ames reprints with ratty jackets (not the tweed bindings) at $8 each; and a well-used set of first edition Little Golden alphabet books at $35. But the real shocker was the railroad titles. Brace yourself – this makes your roller coaster nightmares look like carousel rides. They had maybe eight or ten train titles that were good except that in every instance their price exceeded $100. Profit margin? Forgetabout it! Not a single dealer bought one and that included at least three who, like me, have spent that much in the past for a single book. I did get some stuff from this room, but I have to dig it out of the bags to tell you what it was. If there’s anything good I’ll show you later, but I rather doubt it.

All told, I suspect the day was better than it feels because we got lots of store and mall stuff too. But what a way to do this. Call me old, but give me the good old days.

Roe, Roe, Roe Your Boat ... From Server to Server

2011-10-11T10:25:00.009-05:00

Okay, so what’s going on with Biblio? Is everybody getting orders, or am I suddenly the popular girl? Seriously, this site only throws me a bone on the fourth Wednesday of the first month of every third year and then only when it rains. But in the past couple days I’ve received the following orders:

Forty Years of Pioneer Life; Memoir of John Mason Peck -- $75 (an antiqurian title from 1864)

The Tombs of the Doges of Venice -- $80 (just got that one. It was pictured a few days ago.)

Best Guns -----$45 (bought from the online customer I told you about)

Fleur En Fiole -- $85 (the erotic novel written in ancient China and produced in a two volume set in French. Got it this summer and had a photo of it here)

Dillie Delights --- $20 (a book about tatting I somehow acquired 13 years ago. I knew I had it though because for some reason I have a mysterious neurotic hatred of it.)

Anyway, I thought I’d mention this little blip on the biblio radar as it ties into something I read in the Auction Bytes newsletter the other morning. A few posts back I remember mentioning the controversy over whether or not sites have multiple servers which make visible only part of your inventory at any given time. The discussion in the newsletter was focused on ebay and their nefarious behaviors which caused me and many, many other sellers to take a hike. I’ve been gone over a year now, but apparently the games not only continue, but have taken on new shades of ugly. The point, however, is that the server issue came during the conversation and an IT person chimed in on it. Of course being an IT person the responder got into gates and portals and other such esoteric stuff, so I’ll spare you the long version.

The bottom line is, yes, there are indeed multiple servers at large sites due to the staggering volume of listings. One server is active and one is passive --a euphemism for invisible inventory -- and they alternate which explains why you look up one of your own books and don’t see it listed and then three weeks later you do. It also explains why you might receive a cluster of orders from the same geographic area. Back when I sold on Amazon – this would be years ago when they had z-shops – we always puzzled over why every order originated from west of the Mississippi one day and then were all from New England the next.

I would surmise that this may also be why for a period of time all of your orders are for old stock. Whenever this happens to me I’m as nervous as a piano protege trying out for Julliard since some of this stuff dates back to the 90’s. In those days sites (there were only a few then – ABE, alibris and bibliofind) kept their noses out of your business, so if you mistakenly forgot to remove a sold book the world didn’t fly off it’s axis and hit you in the head. Whenever I don’t have a book the odds are good that it traces back to those days. In fact, whenever I actually locate some arcane old title I feel like I’ve made it to the peak of Everest – breathless, panting, and relieved to have survived. For years I’ve been talking about needing to do a physical inventory, but when you’re a one-woman show time doesn’t exactly pour over you like scented shampoo.

While we’re on the subject of old stock, it occurs to me that I haven’t played my old game of forcing a sale on a book that’s overstayed its welcome. I keep trying to get you guys to join in – it’s very fun, really, but nobody has so far. To refresh your memory, the idea is to choose a book that should have sold but didn’t, most likely because the devotees of the you-don’t-gotta-know-nothin’-to-sell-books school of pricing undercut your copy so many times the book’s in a coma. But sometimes you don’t even have to cut the price. All it takes to make magic is focus. The book gods reward you for picking it up and looking through it, changing something in the listing, adding a photo, or sometimes even RAISING the price. I’ve sold every one I tried to do here which I think is maybe four. It doesn’t always happen fast – it has taken me as long as two months and several changes – but I always did it. I guess you could argue that if it takes two months it would have sold anyway. But I would counter that it had been listed for YEARS and hadn’t.

Okay then, I’m going to make this hard. I have 17 volumes of what should be 19 of the novels of Edward Payson Roe, a Civil War veteran and minister who was actually a popular author in his day. I have not listed these yet, but I think given their limited appeal and the fact that they’ve been stashed in the closet for too long they’re fair game. I know you’re thinking I’m three sandwiches short of a picnic for having bought them in the first place, but wait! I had the full set of 19 previously and sold them on January 1, 2007 for $175. So when I saw them at an estate sale for $15 for the lot I figured I’d take a second shot at it. The condition is great, so that helps, and I have considerable latitude on price to make up for the missing volumes which makes it even more worth giving it a go.

Anybody else want to try moving a mountain? It’s fun. REALLY. And, who knows --you might even sell it on biblio!

Enlightened

2011-10-08T14:18:00.016-05:00

The lush, leafy umbrella of our enormous tree is gone and suddenly our formerly dark except-in the-winter family room fills with a lovely light. It’s a northern exposure, so it’s not blinding, but with two skylights, one window, and eight feet of patio doors the world just got much brighter. What is not so bright is the reason we came to bask in this light at this particular moment. We had had two removal quotes previously in the $1600 range neither of which included disposal of the wood. Each time we hemmed and hawed, but ended up not doing it. Then last week the owner of a tree company who was doing a small job in our neighborhood knocked on the door and inquired if we would like the tree taken out. He was desperate for work, he said, and would remove it, cut up the wood, haul it to the store for the fireplace, and prune the trees in the front yard, all for $1100. The only thing was he’d lost a lot of his equipment due to the economic downturn and no longer had a saw with a circumference great enough to wrestle the giant all the way to the ground, which meant there would still be about four feet of trunk left standing. I wasn’t there when he said this, but Eric told me his humiliation was acute and complete.

It was. I saw it this morning in the stark outline of what remains of the tree.

What’s left is unsightly of course, but we will deal with that. My husband will dust off his forestry degree and hack away at it. He already has a plan to split it in two and take it out in parts. So aesthetics are not the issue. The issue is the four men who worked from nine a.m. to seven p.m, two of whom then came back the next day and worked another four or five hours loading up the many logs and dragging them down Rte 42 the ten miles to the store. Including the owner, all have been reduced to piecework – a day here, a day there. The youngest, the father of a newborn, had to move in with his in-laws because the cost of keeping an apartment had proven unsustainable. The oldest, a man in his 50’s, has a bad back, but in spite of his boss’s admonitions to be careful, cleared away a mountain of limbs by himself

As we stood in the backyard Wednesday night ankle-deep in tree debris Eric said, “Those guys -- they’re the faces of the recession, you know.”

I know.

I thought of them this morning as I stood at the back door in the early gray light with my coffee looking out at the butchered corpse of our once vital tree. Its shape, even minus arms, brought to mind a trip to Arizona and the outline of a lone saguaro cactus standing sentinel on the mesa. The silhouette of both the tree and the cactus is defined by abrupt lines, too much space, and a harsh scarceness of symmetry. Of course the dead tree lacks the saguaro’s needle-like spines, or seems to at least. But it isn't true. Appearances to the contrary, the tree is fairly abloom with spines.

Just ask the four men who rubbed up against it this week.

A Bookseller's Christmas

2011-10-07T11:17:00.004-05:00

We got it! We got it! The antiquarian collection we bid on I mean. I was beginning to think the answer was no, as we bid on the weekend and only just found out late yesterday that the offer had been accepted. It definitely perked me up, as we had gone to see another “collection” so bad it was fairly stunning. You know you’re in trouble when the owner opens the basement door and the smell of must not only rises up to greet you, but nearly slams you against the wall. But even that hardly mattered as the books looked like they’d been run over by a tractor and buried in a peat bog. And even THAT didn’t matter because they weren’t any good to begin with. As I’ve mentioned many times, it’s endlessly frustrating the way people present their books over the phone even when you practically give them the third degree. This owner announced that his were all “antique”, part of an estate, and greatly loved by their former owner (his mother), which of course implied they’d been well preserved. Like so many others who’ve called, he couldn’t remember exactly what the collection consisted of, but was sure it was history for the most part. Turns out, the only history it ever brushed up against was its own. Novels. What he had were novels. By minor authors. Authors so minor I didn’t recognize a single one.

After declining them (in the nicest possible way) we stopped by the antiques mall with some new stuff for the weekend. It seemed pretty draggy over there, but the nightly report did show a couple sales. I think I’ve become a tad paranoid though after the shoplifting of Alice Underground because almost right away I spun into a panic when I couldn’t find a valuable Ohio title – Cherry’s The Portage Path. Eric formed a one man search and rescue party and -- voila! – ferreted it out of the children’s section. While that was a great relief, I was still fairly wired and had to do the grocery shopping yet. We ran around the store like trainees for the Boston marathon and got most of it done pretty effortlessly until I picked up a carton of eggs and wound up with egg white all over my hands. Words cannot convey the grossness of the moment. So the news about the collection when we got home was like winning t he lottery.

As it turns out, we even HAVE the books already. Eric got them this morning and dropped off my two big boxes on his way to the store. He wasn’t even out the door when I began rummaging for two specific books. Years ago we bought a collection of railroadiana from an elderly man who was moving from Medina to California. With it came a sole odd 18th century volume entitled Miscellania Curiosa, one volume of a set of three from the 1720’s. For years I’ve kept an eye out for the others, but never encountered any until we viewed this collection. Not only was there one of the missing books in it, but possibly TWO of them. It had been a long time since I’d looked at ours, so I wasn’t sure which one we had. They’re fairly pricey even at a single volume, so the whole set would be cause for dancing in the street. But do I HAVE a whole set? No, I do not. I ended up with a volume two and two copies of volume three. (See photos of books above). For one split-second I thought had them all because they were marked volumes one, two and three. The problem came when I looked at the title pages simultaneously and realized that one volume was a from different edition and the sequence of the volumes in it had changed.

Of course it was a long shot anyway, so I’m not really too disappointed. The collection as it stands is quite good and I’m pleased with it. I haven’t been through it all yet, but I’ve already pulled out some cool stuff, some of which I remembered and some I didn’t. That’s the fun part of buying a lot of books at once though. You can’t possibly remember everything, so it’s always a bookseller’s Christmas.

Thoughts At Lakeside

2011-10-05T14:54:00.002-05:00

As I write this the sound of chainsaws fills the air with a music I both appreciate and rue. The reason they’re singing is because an enormous tree which has needed to depart our company for at least 20 of the 24 years we’ve lived here is about to be felled. Four tree surgeons arrived at nine to perform the operation made delicate due to the tree’s proximity to power lines, the garage, and our neighbor’s screened porch. I know it needs to go – it’s too close to the house – but what a lovely thing it is overarching the brick patio. I can’t bear to watch, so every blind is closed and I am hidden away in my office as though it were a windowless cubicle and I a corporate worker bee (oh, perish the thought!). The good part is I can finally write the blog I promised you about the Lakeside Press books I bought last week at the FOL sale. If you’ve never seen these be sure to read on, as this is something you definitely want to file away in your memory for future reference.

Until I saw these in two cardboards boxes priced at $40 for all I had never seen a Lakeside Classic with the word Christmas on the title page. But I HAD read about them, so all it took was one glance to send a thousand neurons firing – zing! zing! zing! zing! – until my brain practically exploded with Roman candles. I got all but one of the 1940’s annuals, all of the 50’s and 60’s, and the first six from the 70’s. And every last one says CHRISTMAS on the title page. I know this practice stopped at some point – Chistmas being replaced by December -- but I cannot seem to find out when this was. All I can tell you is that at least through 1975 the word Christmas is spelled out in block letters.

But before we talk about the salient points of these pretty little volumes (all are in fine conditon) a bit of history is in order. The Lakeside Classics are the imprint of the R.R. Donnelly Company, a venerable publishing house created by a Canadian immigrant named Richard Robert Donnelly who hung his first publisher’s shingle in 1864. The business incorporated and reincorporated many times over the years, but was already successful with its Lakeside imprint when the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed the Lakeside building and its contents. It’s said that Donnelly traveled to New York in a borrowed coat with a free train ticket to seek a loan to regroup. Not only was his integrity and reputation rewarded, but he bounced back with a brand new product that proved to be a big hit with readers. Donnelley published hardback fiction in soft cover, added woodcut illustrations and sold his Lakeside Library novels at a dime apiece, launching the second revival of the paperback novel which had first been introduced in the 1840’s (yeah, surprising, isn’t it?), but had faded away.

Now fast forward to the early 20th century – 1903 to be exact. Donnelly senior is dead, but his son, Thomas, snaps the reins and launches the Lakeside Classics which would be finely bound, small books (16mo) issued one per year and always an uncommon title generally on American western history that’s long been out-of print and known primarily to historians. But here’s the kicker – these books were purposely NEVER sold. They were published and distributed as annual gifts to employees, stockholders, vendors and associates, which means that the first time a reader or collector ever bought one was on the secondary market! The book that launched the whole shebang in 1903 was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. It’s estimated that a thousand copies came off the press but, even so, it’s pretty hard to find one and VERY expensive if you do. Only a few complete sets of Lakeside Classics are known to exist and their volumes are multi-colored because Lakeside has made it a practice to change the color of the binding every 25 years.

Here’s the breakdown by year:

1903-1927 – dark green

1928-1952 – red

1953-1977 – navy blue

1978-2002 – dark brown

2003 – turquoise

Not surprisingly, a few sellers on ABE, clearly of the “you don’t gotta know nothin’ to sell books” school of pricing, have listed these ridiculously low, but research shows that experienced sellers are listing in the $30-50 range. I will be doing likewise, but probably not until after the Akron Antiquarian Show in April.

Until then back into the box they go. And me back to work with the chainsaws still whirring away outside the window killing my beautiful tree that sits, ironically -- near the lakeside.

P.S. To see early examples of specific Lakeside titles get thee to this impressive website http://www.lakesideclassicbooks.com/ and have a look. It clarified my recollection of what I'd previously read and also provided dates for the various colors for which I am most grateful.

Degrees of Gratification

2011-10-03T10:35:00.006-05:00

Finally, my cold is pretty much gone, so the weekend proved to be both fun and gratifying. Eric was supposed to have been in Maryland, but due to weather reports from the area decided not to spend the entire last week selling books in a tent. As it turns out, Saturday brought in local customers to the store who had gone to the show and returned with horror stories about cars stuck in the mud and people not being able to get to Merchant’s Row. I had been totally bummed because it was also the weekend of the first Cleveland Antiquarian Book & Paper Fair sponsored by NOBS. But as “luck” would have it it turned out to be a blessing in disguise that I didn’t take a booth after all. I would have been hard-pressed to fill it, as I don’t even have most of what I took to Akron in April, much less enough that’s new and noteworthy. However, that may be about to change.

Over the weekend we saw a collection that I would very much like to have. It’s going to be expensive if we get it, but it’s entirely antiquarian with a range of titles, primarily history and fishing. We submitted a bid this morning and now must wait and see what happens. I’m not sure if other dealers are looking at it too, but I got the impression we were the only ones – at least at this point. Again though, I will only be buying a section of it with Eric taking the majority for the store. I bid $500 for two boxes, though Eric said there are two additional boxes that had not been offered initially and we could maybe get them too. But of course there are no guarantees of anything yet..

Meanwhile I did buy some books at an estate sale in Akron Saturday morning. The rain poured so steadily that everyone, even the most loquacious, huddled in their cars until they passed out numbers. We took ours and repaired to Panera for coffee ( it was FREEZING) and returned about fifteen minutes before show time. The house, a massive Tudor (usually my favorite, but this one had a weird floor plan), had been owned by an antiques dealer, so was filled with all kinds of goodies for his former competition. The books were more of an after-thought, but I did get a few very minor titles (see representative photo above), so all was not lost. I just wonder when, or if, I am ever going to go to a sale where we actually get a decent pay-off. I’d say we’re due, so if the book gods are listening here’s the deal. While I’m very, very grateful for what we get, however less than dazzling it may be, I do think, if I maybe so bold, that we deserve a smidgen better – especially after what happened when we left the sale.

Steady rain had given way to high winds and the forty-day flood. Here’s the visual. Eric lopes down the street, books protected by his jacket while I fly past him hanging onto an enormous pile of tissue paper (think gift wrap and gift baskets) all of which was still encased in its original plastic. Down the street and around the corner I run like a banshee in the watery gloom, packages slip-sliding around like an armload of eels. By the time I get to the car a tissue paper trail worthy of Hansel and Gretel lies in my wake. Four packages hit the drink and somehow got soaked even with the plastic. But I picked them up, took them home and festooned the floor with the soggy sheets until they dried to a crinkly texture that’s great for collage. So I ended up with four packages of art paper and a dozen for gift wrap.

Saturday night Nancy and I drowned any sorrows we had at Santosusso’s, a nice Italian place right up the main road from my house. We had a glass of wine, a great dinner, lots of laughs and a fashion parade. It turned out to be Homecoming night so we saw it all – the good, the bad, the ugly, and the OMG-honey- what-were-you-THINKING-when-you –bought-that dress?! This led to hilarious tales of our own dances of the past – the dresses we loved and the boys we did not. We also noted that girls seem to go in dateless packs to formal events these days. A dozen such young women shared a huge table, all dressed beautifully and clearly having a blast. The interesting thing was that most of them were more attractive than the ones hanging off the arms of the boys!

And now for the best part of the whole weekend. Late Saturday afternoon I got an email from the buyer of the Chinese autograph book. Just when I thought it was perfect, it gets even BETTER. He had told me initially that he had in his collection a carte-de-visite of a young Chinese boy who, though unnamed, was clearly part of the Chinese Educational Mission. The clue was the photographer’s name and location which matched one of the participating towns. Well, he opens the book I sent and there inside is a cheaper identical photo identified in the boy’s own hand, not only with his name and the date, but his home city in China. He also discovered that this young fellow was the book’s owner! The reason the mysterious album started out in America and wound up in China only to wind up back in America is that its owner left the U.S. in 1881 with the rest of the kids, but then snuck back into the U.S. in 1884 where, with the help of a Protestant minister, he went to college and became an engineer. After graduation he married a young American girl he’d met in high school and they moved to New Jersey where he worked as an engineer and fathered two sons. The sad part is he died in 1909 at around age 43 assuming he was eighteen when he began college.

My buyer also told me that he’d called his friend, Dr. Eric J. M. Rhoads, a professor who is the leading authority on the Chinese Educational Mission and has written a book about it. Of course nothing will do but for me to buy the book, Stepping Forth Into the World: The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States, 1872-81, published this year by Hong Kong University Press. I cannot express how honored I am to have played a small part in the documentation of this event, or how truly gratified I am to have noticed value in what appeared to be nothing more than a teenage kid's friendship book.

This –THIS -- is why I do this work. And why I wish I could do it forever.

The Very Booky Week!

2011-09-30T13:25:00.004-05:00

I thought I’d be back sooner than this, but we had the big book sale on Tuesday, followed by another big book sale on Wednesday and I had a cold throughout the whole thing. I also absolutely HAD to upload some new books to keep Abe from going as dormant as a tulip bulb in the dead of winter. For me ABE is crucial, as a good seventy-five per cent of our sales derive from there. I know people argue that other sites are better for them, but I think it’s a matter of what you have. When I had my once-a-year picker and his 28 boxes of brand new books alibris and affiliates snapped up the majority, but when I choose books myself the golden goose is ABE – hands down.

I’m happy to report that the sales were fun. In fact, the five-hour-wait -sale Tuesday was as peaceful as the Dali Lama’s bedroom. Only one of the crazies showed up and I think he was on meds given the lack of theatrics. The books were so-so, but I did get a lot for the antiques mall and maybe a half dozen nice things for online, including a 1905 A Child’s Garden of Verses with Jessie Wilcox Smith illustrations and 38 – count ‘em! -- Lakeside Press annual Christmas issue books from the 40’s through the 60’s. I want to do a blog post about these separately very soon, but I thought I’d mention them because they were a great buy at $40 for the lot.

The next morning, sniffling and sneezing all the way, I showed up at the Wayne County Fairgrounds at seven a.m. for the Wooster AAUW sale.The crowd was down, but word had leaked (ha-ha) that a day of torrential rain had damaged 300 boxes of their donations. There were still a LOT of books, but no specials table which means the best of what they took in in donations got an unwelcome bath. But, even so, I found a lot of books for the antiques mall and some great stuff for online too. The award for most expensive book goes to Eric who unearthed The Tombs of the Doges of Venice by Debra Pincus for a paltry $2. My favorite finds include a 1920's book in superb condition about the Phillipines with a fold-out map (see picture below)and LOTS of magazines. At fifty cents a copy I got 13 complete years, four issues per year of Antiquity, A Quarterly Review of Archaeology spanning the 50’s and 60’s, plus two stand-alone fat issues with fold-outs from the 1920’s and 13 miscellaneous other issues. I also bought at $1 each a box of Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians so heavy if would make a sumo wrestler tipsy. I know there are many full year runs there – I’m just not sure yet HOW many. Okay, I can hear it already -- she’s nuts! I AM nuts -- about magazines. Love ‘em and they know it so they always go happily off to their new homes for me. Add to all of the above breakfast with our friend Paul from Archer’s Books and the sale was great fun.

This morning I finally got over to the mall loaded up with 15 new books. When I buy mall books I never take everything at once, as it’s better to have something new every weekend. It also took me all of yesterday morning to clean, ticket, and mylar the ones I did take which is another reason I’ve been MIA here. From there we headed to the local library where we met with the new volunteers for the FOL sale. No, no – it’s NOT what you’re thinking. I am NOT going to pre-pick sales. My role was only to advise.They had quite a number of old books that had been around since Noah built the Ark but, sadly, all it took was one glance to understand why. Except for a 1937 University of Akron yearbook and two of those cute art instruction books for kids with the killer color art published by Prang at the turn-of-the-century (their's were mint) the rest was literally landfill.

But the fun part was the stash hidden in a cupboard. They actually had five really nice volumes which is a lot considering that this is not a book town One I recognized immediately as a $50 book because I sold it twice this year. The others I had never had but I knew they were good, so I showed them how to look things up on bookfinder comparing “apples to apples” and, sure enough, they hit the jackpot every time. I know they would have sold them to me on the spot, and I must say it was tempting, but I have ranted about that like a fishwife here for the past year so it would be hypocritical to even THINK it. So, sadly, I refrained and am glad I did because it truly is a conflict of interest. This library has had a bad rep with dealers and now things are rockin’ and rollin’ under new management so they need those books to lure back the former faithful.

Anyway, it’s been a booky week and there’s an estate sale tomorrow morning which promises “antique books.” Given the fact that we will have to be there at 6:30 in the morning I’m trusting the book gods to smile on us one more time.

Sale-ing Along ...

2011-09-27T08:48:00.002-05:00

Michigan was fun, but it’s nice to be back at work. Today we are off to a book sale and I am looking forward to breaking in that new L.L. Bean bag. It’s even a library sale which, as you know, I place in the same category as a root canal. Oh, the crazies will be there swarming like gnats, but I’m still jazzed (though that could change when I see them). But even the downside has an upside today because I also have a meeting with the publicist hired by NOBS (Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society) to plan strategy for the 2012 antiquarian book and paper show. Yes, this year the 30th anniversary fair has been expanded to include paper which is very exciting because I’m crazy for paper and have sold it for years.

The bad/good part of the book sale is the way it’s handled. It starts at five, but due to the behavior of the aforementioned crazies, the Friends of the Library have found it infinitely more peaceful to hand out numbers at two. While this is great in theory, and actually IS great in a way, because you can leave, have a late lunch or early dinner and come back shortly before the doors open, it also means you need to be there initially at NOON. Yes, noon – and even then you will not be at the front of the line. So we’ll stand around for two hours, grab a number, go off to meet the publicist, and come back around 4:30. The pre-sale publicity doesn’t exactly have me buzzing like a lightning rod, as it seems much too hyped over cookbooks, but I’m counting on liking something they didn’t deem worthy of mention. At any rate, we need books so we will go and hope for the best.

But enough of that. I had the coolest thing happen Friday and haven’t had time to tell you about it. A man called from New England saying that he had stumbled across my blog post from last year about the Chinese autograph book from the 1870’s which contained photos and entries by both American and Chinese teenagers (see Monday, June 14, 2010 &Thursday, July 8, 2010) in the archive. With the help of my oldest daughter we had determined that very likely the book was a relic from the Chinese American educational mission which took place in New England. It’s very difficult to set a price for something like this and I was not entirely hot to sell it anyway, so I tucked it away with our private collection and decided we’d keep it. The caller indicated straight up that he wanted it and I responded immediately with tepid interest. My fear with one-of- a-kind items such as this is that the buyer has only a passing interest and will ultimately not take care of it. In a world increasingly dependent on technological storage (often solely on technological storage) I hang on to items like this with both hands. I guess you might be thinking I’m out of my mind, but I actually can, and have, turned down sales for such reasons. At last year’s antiquarian show we talked a woman out of buying a set of children’s books only to break it up and disperse it amongst her grandchildren across the country!

So, with that in mind, I listened to what he had to say, though doubted greatly that the little black book was about to depart my company. But guess what? If ever a book belonged to someone this one belongs to him. Not only was he a smart guy who knows his way around a bookstore, but also a collector who is incredibly well versed on this little known aspect of American history. He told me so much about it that I actually sat down (and I NEVER sit down to talk on the phone) and listened raptly. Though I knew that the Chinese boys boarded with American families (which is truly incredible) I did not know that many boarded with unmarried Christian women! I also didn’t know that when they returned to China with their shiny new American educations they were not honored at all and ,in fact, paid for it for a time with lessened career opportunities. Ultimately this changed and they became superstars, but first they had to pay their dues for swimming against the tide.

By then I knew I’d found my made-to-order most perfect buyer ever, I told him outright that I’d harbored concerns, but he’d talked his way past them. I also said that Eric and I would think over the weekend about selling it and I’d call him back Monday. I did, he did, and I shipped it this morning priority mail insured.

How cool is THAT?

Reading The Irish Rain

2011-09-23T11:48:00.004-05:00

The world outside my office window is tinted green and gray today. At least the rain has stopped, but it’s small comfort according to the weather report and the fact that we are leaving tomorrow at 6:30 in the morning for Michigan, so we can stand around in the mud and watch our seven year-old grandson play soccer. There’s something very diabolical about kids’ soccer and rain. We so rarely get to attend a game, but every single time we do it’s conducted in Irish weather. You’d think they’d cancel, but they do not, because Michiganders are nothing if not an exceedingly hardy lot. There could be a monsoon with little players blowing in the wind like scraps of paper and they’d still be out there with their lawn chairs and golf umbrellas screaming “Defense! Defense!”. To Eric and me it’s unnecessary torture, but what do we know? When it comes to sports together we’re not a whole person. In fact, I may actually have the edge, as I was a huge fan of the diminutive NBA player Earl Boykins back when he tore up the court at Eastern Michigan in the early ‘90’s.

One good thing about the weather though is it melds perfectly with the book I’m reading at the moment, Eric Newby’s Round Ireland in Low Gear, recommended by my bookseller friend Paul Bauer of Archer’s Books. A million years ago (in the 70’s) when Eric and I were young and unencumbered we spent a raucous month in Ireland visting both of my clans of relatives, the Chambers in County Mayo and the Carrolls in Cork, but mostly banging around the gorgeous coastline by ourselves. We got there in mid-June and returned home in mid-July, so never experienced Ireland when the Furies were unleashed. Newby and his wife were no spring chickens back in the mid-80’s when they braved gale force winds and days of pounding rain pedaling bicylcles over a steep, desolate, and in winter, virtually uninhabited, terrain. Every night proved a challenge to find a B&B open in the winter and every day an equal challenge to scrounge up lunch and dinner. You would think from the menu that the Irish wouldn’t recognize a vegetable if one walked up and introduced itself in Gaelic.

Of course the romantic view of Ireland is that the rain is “soft” and indeed it can be. For the first two weeks we were there we spotted nary a drop, which must be some kind of record. But the last two weeks more than made up for it with endless days of cold sodden grayness broken only by hours of sudden intense light. I ended up with the mother of all sore throats despite frequent breaks to snug pubs where we sat by open peat fires sipping Irish coffee or an endless hot “cuppa.” By the time I was certain I’d die of strep we were in Killarney at a lovely hotel where the proprietor’s son whisked us away at break-neck speed (at that point I was certain it was the TRIP that would kill me) to a place called St. Clare’s (or was it St. Ann’s?) Lying-In Hospital presided over by a tiny nun who was most distraught to see a Yank in such distress at her establishment. Every time I think of the place I picture Ernest Hemingway tucked up in an iron bed on a ward in a Spanish hospital during the revolution.

As it turned out, it was not strep “a’tall” just a “bit of a nuisance” which could be handled easily, according to the doctor, with “orange” and a spot of medicine I was to buy at the chemist. This “spot of medicine” did not require a prescription, but probably would have in the U.S. as it was most effective. As for “the orange”, the hotel provided Eric with a large pitcher free of charge because they felt so sorry for the “the poor garel” (that would be ME). In the throes of such effusive sympathy, however, they neglected to mention it was to be mixed with water. Over the course of a day and a night I drank the whole thing straight which may very well have expedited my recovery.

Thinking of all of this makes me long to get back to the Irish Furies blowing from the cold Atlantic and pounding the west coast of the auld sod as our poor intrepid cyclists forge on. I think today I will spend the morning readying books for the pilgrimage to the mall tonight (nothing small, I promise!) and then repair to the gloom of the family room this afternoon and settle in, with the book and a pot of tea for comfort, oblivious to the call of the internet.

Besides, it's raining again.

A Tale of Two Lapses

2011-09-22T07:04:00.005-05:00

I was wrapping orders this morning when Eric came in from the garage waving a book.

“Look what I found in the bag of stuff I bought at Ravenna for the store. I can’t believe you missed it!”

I can't believe I missed it either, as it’s the best book I selected at Saturday’s accidental book sale. Actually I HAD thought there was a third book, but when I didn’t see it after we got home I surmised that perhaps I hadn’t taken it after all. I remember thinking that the spine was a little wonky, but that I could repair it as I had done earlier with a book about the clay products industry which I showed you some time back. But then I got distracted by the gorgeous Hardy novel I found in the literature section and never thought of it again until Eric handed it over. Amazing to forget a 1924 Boni and Liveright first edition of The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics, a treatise on the Lamarckian theory which posits that organisms may pass characteristics they have acquired in their lifetime to their offspring. Check out the photo above and I think, like me, you’ll wonder why it was even available on the third and final day of the sale. It’s a mystery, but I’m glad the book gods sent it my way.

Actually, I’m also glad it turned up late to give me something positive with which to start this post because my mind has been on something else that occurred on the weekend that wasn’t nearly so pleasant. Interestingly enough, the Lamarkian book and the book that’s the source of my current angst have something in common. Both involved an uncharacteristic mental lapse on my part.

On Thursday when Eric and I made the weekly pilgrimage to the antiques mall to restock I noticed that the tea cart on which I am currently displaying special books seemed a little bare. I brought it to his attention, but he felt certain it was because we’d sold something from it. I allowed myself to be mollified and never thought of it again until Saturday night when I woke with a start knowing that my beloved copy of Alice Underground was missing. But of course books at the mall migrate around the booth like a pack of nomads, so I talked myself out of the trees and went back to sleep.

The next morning we went to the flea market where we had agreed to meet the antiques mall employee I told you about who wanted to trade several of his books for one of ours. As I feared, his were not even close to my cup of tea, but Eric felt he could use them at the store so we made the trade. As Eric was boxing them I mentioned that I may have had a theft of a $50 book. The employee told me that if it turned out to be true to be sure to bring it to the attention of either the manager or the assistant manager. He also said that he would monitor our booth more carefully in the future. Though well intentioned and probably true, it’s not much comfort, as the place is cavernous. You stand at the end of an aisle and it looks like no one is there when in fact a battalion of shoppers are hidden in the individual booths.

After the transaction was completed we looked around at the flea market and I bought a Walton’s game based on the old TV show from the 70’s after which we headed over to the mall to drop it off and conduct an extensive search for Alice. Book by book we looked, but I knew she was long gone and indeed she was. This marks our sixth, and most expensive, loss from theft since we opened last November. The first was a rare real photo postcard of an open air streetcar in Columbus, followed by three hand colored Japanese real photo WWII era postcards depicting geishas and the tea ceremony, two hand colored Italian WWI aviation postcards, a Victorian cabinet photograph of an adorable little girl in an exquisite dress taken in a garden, and a brochure with diagrams for building 20 boats. And that’s what we know about. Who knows what else may have drifted off.

I duly reported the loss and the response was both sympathetic and kind, but did nothing of course to bring back Alice. I got her at Case Western Reserve this past spring and she was my favorite book from a sale that was pretty lackluster overall. I’d planned to sell her on my favorite site as I knew she’d be a big hit, but in an impulsive moment took her to the mall instead thinking what a fun find she’d be for someone who loved Alice In Wonderland. If you’ve never seen Alice Underground it’s a facsimile reprint of Lewis Carroll’s original Alice manuscript replete with his hand-printed text. My edition was small and in a slipcase, which, like the boards and the interior art, were colored in pastel hues.

I’ve had plenty of time to mourn the loss and I guess I’m pretty much over it now. In the immortal words of Jimmy Buffet "it's my own damn fault" anyway.It was crazy to take such a small, desirable book over there when I don’t have a locked showcase and even crazier yet to put it out in plain sight practically begging someone to make off with it. You can bet I will never do THAT again.

But isn't it sad that I can't?

In Plain Sight

2011-09-20T09:31:00.006-05:00

After last week’s auction debacle with the nonexistent books I was determined, as you know, to find a replacement – and, believe it or not, I did. It was in Geauga County which is about an hour and a half from where we live. The trip was lovely though, as the land is green and rolling and the atmosphere pastoral, with none of those sad used-up small towns that never fail to plummet me into a funk. It didn’t take long to realize, however, that we were heading deeper and deeper into Amish country. Whenever I think of Ohio Amish communities I think immediately of Holmes County which is the Amish version of Niagara Falls – not because of cascading water, but cascading tourists. They rush out of busses and cars filled with holiday exuberance and leave in their wake a healthy flow of cash spent on buggy rides, quilts, antiques, inns, Amish cooking, bulk spices, and Amish-made furniture.

Buggies abounded on the road to the auction, as did the sight of farm equipment, horses, cows, and large plain white houses and barns. Nearing our destination though we turned onto a road dotted primarily with modern ranch houses and pulled to a stop in front of the one working farm on it. From the passenger seat I gazed across Eric and out the window at a yard filled with STUFF of all kinds presided over by a small army of Amish men and women scurrying about to bring yet more things from the house and prepare the food for the auction-goers to buy. Many times I have been to auctions with Amish bidders, but this was the first one ever held at an Amish farm. Aside from about four other people, we were the only “English” in attendance which was quite interesting, though Eric does have Amish customers at the store sometimes and when I was editor of a weekly newspaper (first journalism job a million years ago) the Amish drove into town to place classified ads at the newspaper office. But even so, the novelty of it gave the day a welcome little zip.

For about ten minutes we walked around gazing at furniture, dishes, linens, and tools with no books in sight. Normally this would be enough to send my internal alarm into shriek mode, but I was too busy watching a young Amish man to notice. The rest of the men and boys wore long-sleeved blue work shirts topped with black vests, but not this guy. Never mind that it was cold enough to practically see your breath -- he strutted around like a banty rooster in a short-sleeved, very fitted shirt showing off his considerable physique. The pants, while of the Amish button-front style, were also fitted -- think rumble scene in West Side Story. I was quite bemused until Eric spotted the books and beckoned me over

I should have spotted them myself given the crowd hovering around the many boxes, but I don;' recall ever seeing an Amish guy who not only was a hunk, but KNEW it. Hmmm – that’s not what we’re here to talk about though, is it? No, it’s not. So then ….

It’s been our experience that the Amish LOVE books and will pay astonishing – make that, staggering -- amounts of money for them. The only time I ever won a bidding war against an Amish man was for an over-sized two volume set of 19th century books about “modern” machinery and it ended up costing me a hundred dollars when I’d expected to pay $50. Ah, but not to worry. After going through a dozen boxes the handwriting was on the wall. Unless you wanted Amish romances, children’s books of the Laura Ingalls Wilder variety, quilting books, cookbooks, German bibles, and cowboy coloring books from the 50’s all colored in, this was not your auction. Sadly. we departed without even registering.

As we turned back onto the main road though Eric spotted a garage sale. Yes, I know I don’t love garage sales, but by then I was desperate. The house was a modern ranch and the very nice lady running the sale a Mennonite. She had had many books, she informed me, but she’d advertised on Craig’s List and all the “good ones” were gone. Fortunately, those consisted of 36 Janet Oke romances, so the pain was more than tolerable, especially after we discovered three surprisingly good books in the garage – The Amish In America; Failed Settlements (it had dates, but I don’t remember and the book is already at the mall), plus Mennonites in Europe and Amish Mennonites in Germany; The Estates Where They Lived, and Their Families.

At that point we were downright giddy with success, so we threw caution to the wind and took a detour through the town of Ravenna. As luck would have it a charity run in town blocked off the main drag and forced us to turn onto a side street which brought us smack in front of the library and a large sign that said BOOK SALE. I knew very well that Saturday was the last day of the picked-over sale, but when the book gods send you a scrap of anything you’re wise to shut up and be grateful. So in we go and within five seconds I am holding a brand new Easton Press leatherbound copy of Together We Cannot Fail; FDR and The American Presidency in the Years of Crisis replete with its CD. A few minutes more and I find an extremely handsome British edition of Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes from the 1960’s in a very nice dustjacket. That, too, is already at the mall. Admittedly, it wasn’t a lot to get excited about, but here’s the thing -- the bill was a dollar. A DOLLAR!

I know, I know, it could still be argued that the excursion was a failure considering how far we traveled. But I beg to differ. Five good books for a song, a great time, and a Thai salad at Panera upon return to civilization is not to be sneezed at. AND, let us not forget, that doesn’t even count the banty rooster and his fitted shirt!

Tomorrow! Tomorrow!

2011-09-19T16:47:00.002-05:00

Hi everybody,

Just wanted to let you know I'm still on the planet. I have been crazy busy, but will be back tomorrow, the 20th, with a new post. PROMISE!

Tess

Searching for Book Sales

2011-09-13T13:14:00.007-05:00

Well, it looks like I’m still a bookseller in search of a book sale. My Michgian back-up plan crashed and burned because I remembered the dates wrong. I saw the ad a couple weeks ago, but of course then it was far in the future so I didn’t make notes. When I went back to check this morning my heart sank to my feet. It’s TOMORROW, the day Eric returns from the wilds of Indiana. We can’t even go on the first day which is Thursday (tomorrow night’s the preview) because it’s at nine a.m. which means we’d have to be in line hours earlier and it’s a three hour drive from here. If we could go up the night before it would be great because we could also do the preview, but there’s no way Eric will be up for that after a five hour trip home in a huge truck.

The interesting thing about this sale is it comes equipped with a wrinkle I’ve never seen before. On preview night all books are priced fifty per cent more than they will be the following morning. At first glance you fly back in horror, but here’s the thing. The ad said that on the regular day prices would range from a dollar to ten dollars. So, okay, a $10 book on opening day is a $15 book at the preview. If it’s the right book, who cares? Around here the FOL sales are so inflated they should pass out complimentary vials of smelling salts for when you fall to the floor in a dead faint which is practically guaranteed to happen. It’s nothing to see books priced at $50-$100. Sometimes I even buy them, which probably just encourages them, but I’ve done okay with it and am not complaining about the good stuff. It’s when they get full of themselves over books that are not worth it, or are in deplorable condition, that I get a little cranky.

Condition means nothing to FOL pricers. They “look it up” (oh, how I hate that phrase) compare apples to breadfruit, and then cheerfully pencil in the biggest price they can find. A lot of them then run a print-out which used to be a joke because all you had to do was look at the number of the listing to calculate how many above it were cheaper and also the date at the top which gave away the fact that they’d looked it up LAST YEAR. Ah, but now they are smarter – all numbers and dates are – you guessed it – gone! So it’s still a joke, just a smarter one.

Of course the reason FOLs exist is not to make booksellers wealthy (THERE’S an oxymoron, huh?), but to raise money for the library. I’m definitely all for that and really don’t even get too worked up over the mile-high prices (unless I fall for a bogus one and get burned!). If they get their asking price God bless ‘em. My big complaint centers on allowing the sales to be pre-picked by “volunteers” who are actually dealers whose motives have about as much to do with philanthropy as roller skates have to do with chickens. But it’s a beautiful sunny day and I’m in no mood for a rant of that ilk, so enough said about the whole thing.

Oh! Here’s something fun. Yesterday I sold the BEST dictionary at the antiques mall. If you have not seen the Webster’s from the 30’s that’s a foot thick you haven’t seen a dictionary. This is truly the mother of all dictionaries. It’s been there since November and has been looked at a lot. I know this because nobody seems able to put it back on the shelf, so it usually remains on the floor in front of the shelf. I don’t know what the going price is online these days and don’t much care. I got $70 for it and that was fine by me. I also have a very fine two volume replacement dictionary from the 40’s with gorgeous green marbled edges and color plates I’ll be dragging over Thursday.

Speaking of the mall, a potentially interesting deal got tossed in the works. One of the mall employees wants to get rid of a lot of his own books and would very much like a firearms book we have on display. He was hoping we could swap all of his for the one of ours. The book he wants is $65 though, so it’s not as peachy as it sounds at first glance. Still, you never know. He called yesterday to say he’d left a partial list of what he has in the cabinet under one of the bookcases where I keep extra tickets and my cleaning supplies (one of the responsibilities of selling at the mall is cleaning your own booth), so I will check it out when we’re there. The good news is we’ll be going to an FOL sale near where he lives in a week, so if we can connect it won’t even be an extra trip.

I’m actually anxious to get to the mall because I spent the morning readying some very nice books. In addition to the two volume dictionary, I have a three volume Palfrey’s History of New England (1859); Siebert’s seminal The Underground Railroad; From Slavery to Freedom, first edition, 1899; and the ten volume set of Stoddard's Lectures plus four supplements. I'm telling you, if you can't afford a vacation just book an armchair trip with old Stoddard and you'll not only see the world, but have a blast doing it. Fabulous pictures and readable prose -- when it comes to vintage travel Stoddard's THE MAN. Last, but not least, I have a charming 1883 guide to raising canaries and cage birds illustrated with bright, colorful chromolithographs. The fun part is it’s so earnestly written that the author actually provides the music and lyrics for songs to teach your bird! Anybody up for a rousing Fatinitza March and Chorus? No? Well, anyway and I’ve got a bunch of other stuff too, but those are the goodies.

So on that note (ha-ha) I’m off to accomplish something which probably means snapping endless pictures. The good news is if I do it enough I may gain a back-up skill in case the books go belly-up. But let's not talk about that. EVER.