calendar •
1878 – The Harpers Brothers publishing company throws a breakfast for their illustrator Edwin Austin Abbey at Delmonico’s in New York City.

1929 – Hart Crane gives a party for his publishers, Harry and Caresse Crosby of Black Sun Press (publishers of Crane, Kay Boyle, James Joyce, Rene Crevel, and T.S. Elliot, among others). William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, e. e. cummings, and a group of drunken sailors attend. The euphoria doesn’t last: the thirty-one-year-old Crosby kills himself and his mistress, Josephine Bigelow, three days later.

1921- James Joyce gave a reading of his works at Sylvia Beach’s book store Shakespeare & Co. on the Left Bank in Paris.

1968 - Richard Dodd returns a library book his great grandad took out in 1823

birthdays •
1873 - Willa Cather, American novelist (d. 1947)
1807 - John Greenleaf Whittier (d. 1892) Quaker poet and abolitionist (Haverhill, MA)
1888 - Joyce Cary, Anglo Irish writer (d 1957)
1928 – Noam Chomsky, Philadelphia, PA
1932 - Rosemary Rogers novelist
1943 - Susan Isaacs novelist

cool stuff • Remember the Rock Bottom Remainders? well it’s contagious – Don’t Quit your Day Job records has music from authors you actually recognize : Amy Tan, whip in hand, struts through “These Boots are Made for Walking.” Jessica Mitford sings “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” and her friend Maya Angelou joins her for two duets. Hear Stephen King and Dave Barry sing the blues as only two geeky white men can. After turning his pen to songwriting, Norman Mailer performs his song “Alimony Blues.” read more . . . .

It was very busy from the git go at 9 until after noon when the ABAA show down the block opened up. Then it thinned out comfortably. David Kenney from Conservation Gallery (Yarmouth, ME) takes advantage of the downtime to explain prints to potential future customers.
Page Books (Hillsboro, OH) uses these acrylic ‘cake cover’ covers as an elegant solution to displaying delicate items yet still allowing them to be accessible.

There’s always an item, I wish I could not only afford to buy, but afford to KEEP. Booksellers are infamous, everything we collect for ourselves is ALWAYS for sale at the right price. This time it was this program from the First World Science Fiction Convention in 1939 in NYC. Signed by the con organizers and Ray Bradbury. Who in 1939 was a 19 year old newspaper vendor still writing sci fi stories for fanzines. Alas Eric Davidson Bookseller (Medford, NJ) would not take an IOU payable in the year 2030.

I bought a Felicia Lamport book of poetry from Blue Ridge Books (Orlean, VA), an anthology of Raymond Chandler’s letters from Vanishing Books (Cambridge, MA), and a pile of old Goodspeeds Catalogs from Joe Skokowski from Albatross Books (Boston, MA) . . . more on them later.

Hey, you think if I mention everyone who sells me stuff, I will start getting free stuff? nah . . . I don’t think so either

Here’s a bit of paper ephemera you don’t see everyday – a folding paper lamp brought by Resser-Thorner Antiques (Manchester, NH).

I made the rounds, talked to the few folks I even vaguely knew, and they politely pretended I was important. I chatted up some nice new folks hoping to drum up some more readers . . . remind me to get cards printed up for the bullpen . . . I bought me some cool stuff, ate food I didn’t have to make in a sit down restaurant like a grownup. From what I heard, the show was pleasantly profitable. So a good time was had by all.

The whole day I kept thinking I’d come home to a burned (burnt?) out shell, instead she had called all the hospitals looking for me .

BRING MAPS - Buy new ones at least once a decade – mine tend to find their way to the floor of the truck and then acquire decoratively placed muddy boot prints. Regardless of how many I have, I always end up with 3 of one state and only half of another. I hate it when I drive off a map and onto a new one I don’t have.

I like to make small marks on the maps with MM/YY when I find an out of the way goodie, like an off the grid bookshop or good place to eat. I even scrawl radio station info, so I don’t have to spend ages scanning the dial. If this bugs you get a seperate set of maps for notations.

BRING A DIRECTORY – the regions Book Association Dealer directory – ALMOST everywhere has an association of old bookies and any org worth their salt has a directory with a map. When you see them grab FOUR – one goes in the car, one goes on your desk, one gets lent to someone else and one gets lost. You can always visit an association site and print out stuff before you go. Also bring any directories of Antique Malls or thrift stores. You may not plan your trip around them, but if you are off on a stretch between bookstores you may do some exploring. I found a antiuqe mall booth with 50% decent books yesterday cause I was killing time waiting for the auction to start.

BRING YOUR CAMERA – it’s not just for travel snaps anymore. With the no cost of digital photos, I take pictures of things I want to remember instead of writing them down. A signpost, a store front, a restaurant, even a meal or a book. A phone with a camera is a terrific toy for surreptitiously shooting a book in a store.

BRING YOUR OWN BOX and/or bags - I hate it when I buy an expensive book and they put it in a grocery bag or if I buy several and all they have is a banana box with no decent bottom. I save them money and me aggravation, by putting them directly into my own box or bag with handles. You can tear up whatever they gave you and use it to keep them from sliding around.

BRING A TO-GO BAG – my glove box is already full of garage receipts, flashlights, wd-40 and whatnot. So, I keep a canvas bookbag hanging on the chair by the door – with maps, directories, pens, notebook etc . . . It all comes back it the house on top of the box of books. If anything it is a place to put the days receipts and flyers.

HAVE A FLEXIBLE DESTINATION - I learned this doing photography, find a destination point. It doesn’t even HAVE to be a bookstore. You may stop many times before you get there you may even change your trip and NOT get there. But when you have one, you can always swing your compass back to it when you are stuck for a decision.

TAKE THINGS - flyers, anouncements, free mags – the flyers and annoucement cards can lead you to a store or a sale you didn’t know about and may help you plan your next trip. And the free mags are good for packing material after read them or decide your aren’t going to read them.

FOLLOW YOUR NOSE - if you see someplace curious STOP – the odds are good you won’t remember it the next time you go back there. You never know what you will find. There are ENDLESS tales of booksellers stopping unplanned at a thrift store and finding a gem.

USE THE FACILITIES – remember when your mother told you to go before you go? booksellers you don’t know personally may not have a public restroom. Use the ones in the fast food joints, like Mickey D’s, BK adn Dunkins – you DON’T HAVE to eat there – trust me it’s okay – they really don’t care.

STOP AND EAT – regardless of whether you are just starting out or writing off the whole trip. TAKE time to stop and eat. It will at least give you a chance to make notes, check your time and map and make your next decision. If you are on a strict book only budget – bring food and drink in a small cooler with ice and don’t bring crappy road food, bring a treat – something nice you don’t normally make and stop at those odd side road monuments, that’s what they put them there for! I once made my own lobster rolls and ice tea and was eating by a babbling brook off a side road in Warren, New Hampshire when a deer walked right past me – I kid you not! If you have a more flexible allowance – stop someplace that LOOKS interesting – not a chain. Either the food will be great or just as mediocre as fast food kind – either way it is better than eating in your car.

TAKE A LOAD OFF - If you aren’t driving your own vehicle or are somewhere you had to fly to get to think about shipping. If you are visiting a bookseller you know collect up your hoard and ship it home ahead of you from their place. (I did that from California and was sooo glad I did) It may be pricey to stop and ship from a ‘shipping’ store – but depending on the weight of your books, their value and your chiropractic bills it may be worth it. If you are worried about your new acquires, ship your clothes home and put your books in your luggage*. I like to bring empty soft suitcases stuffed inside each other JUST to fill with books.

KEEP AN OPEN MIND – Don’t clutter your head with a search for just the stuff you WANT to find – you will blind yourself to stuff you didn’t know you were looking for. So? you find a few non-book things that you can eBay, or you find some decent books that AREN’T your specialty you can resell to another dealer.

“Never THINK you are going to find anything when you look, just look, with an open mind. Most people CANNOT DO THIS, what with their egos getting in the way, etc. I mean it. One of the absolute hardest things to do is NEVER THINK YOU WILL HIT THE LICK, just have an interest in things and OBSERVE, trying to LEARN SOMETHING. There is a certain chemistry involved with luck, I believe, and, if one does not lay the groundwork for the luck, ie; do the open mind thing and don’t let GREED enter in to your preparation, you can pick up every book in sight for the next million years and all you will be doing is “lifting.” * in from Ed Smith Books

TAKE SOME CHANCES - Blind buy stuff. Most booksellers DON’T live and die by ScoutPal, we use our head and instincts. We buy stuff, we research it and we file that knowledge away so that we can make better guesses the next time. What you learn by merely researching a book can usually outweigh the cost of the book. You are honing your knowledge and over the years you make fewer and fewer ‘bad’ buys. One of the first things a bookseller ever told me is that “You never regret the books you buy as much as the ones you don’t” You HAVE to take some risks, because THOSE are the lessons you remember.

Bookstores were MADE for rainy afternoons. To spend one hacking away at a keyboard filled with Doritos crumbs and cat hair just isn’t much of a substitute for the scent of mold and book dust. Recently I have been bemoaning the fact that with the death of my friend Laurie Petch and the closing of Broadway Books in Derry, NH, there was no longer a ‘real’ bookshop within 25 miles, but at 25.7 miles, Greg Powers was kind enough to open up a used book shop that is just exactly ‘rainy afternoon’ sized.

The eponymously named Powers Rare Books in Manchester, NH, is like nearly everything along the Merrimack River, in an old brick mill building. (personally I think old mill buildings are the ideal structure for old bookstores, they have the floor/ceiling support to actually HOLD all the damn weight)
I had run across Greg at the Vermont BookFair, and ever since had been trying to find a few contiguous minutes to run up to Manchester to check out his store . . . and I did. And I even found stuff to I could afford to buy, color me shocked and surprised. Greg must be doing well, he can afford to staff his joint with a published children’s book author: Muriel Dubois. He has a decent balance of collectibles and readables, and even some stuff I hadn’t seen before. . . and some I was eerily familiar with.

Have you ever SEEN copies of books that you used to own in a strange shop ? I dont mean a book you SOLD to to someone, I mean clumps of books, and you can’t explain it. Occam’s Razor: I sold books to Broadway Books and Greg bought Broadway Books stock, so there, no mystery. But it was still eerie – cause I almost bought some of them back. Yep, done THAT before.

Must get back up there next rainy afternoon.