I thought, since I actually remembered to take a few photos of my booth this time, that I would post them for you.  Just to give you a taste of what the booth looked like... sort of.








Trying to get a good overall view is difficult - for one thing, my booth is handily at a corner and I have some leeway (especially because the fair director lets me get away with it ) to "modify" my booth -- as long as the adjoining booths will let me.

To my right, Discovery Bay Books (David Thornton) finds that having my shelves behind his table actually gives him a vertical space he can use, so he lets me put up large shelves along the left side of his booth.

 To the left of me, Dan Glaeser, (of Dan Glaeser Books) has been a friend of mine for donkey's years and we generally try to work together to find a set up that works for both of us.  (Thanks, Dan!)






I've tried for years to turn the majority of my books face out -- for better effect, so they say -- only to find that I am pathologically unable to leave empty spaces. I bring 25+ boxes of books and darn it, I'm going to slap them all up onto shelves!  (I'm also pathologically unable to let books sit askew on shelves. It doesn't matter if it's my shelves, the shelves of another dealer or someone's house I've been invited too.  I'm a book straightener, surreptitiously if necessary, the same way some people are picture straighteners. It's a SAD, SAD pathology to have.)

See that (Pointing left) there's a book out of place on the top shelf of this first bookcase. 


There are some dealers who also work in / around antiques or antique malls -- they have a skill that I have NEVER been able to master and don't know how they do it. It's an ability to build up layers of books on a table / in a niche which allow all the items to show, but seems to COVER the entire space with really cool results.  One of the dealers at this fair has that ability (and unfortunately, I've lost track of her name) but I really admire that trait.


As with all other book fairs, there are certain items that I bring to which I have a special attachment -- either they are my newest acquisitions, or the coolest items, or the one's I've spent the most time researching.  Every book fair, I secretly hope that these precious items are the one's that make the biggest splash and sell.  And of course, EVERY fair, I find that these are NOT the items that people touched, or picked up, or exclaimed over.   This year, I was really hoping that someone would fall in love with the Babar books.  It was not to be. On the other hand, one of the books that I cherished at the LAST book fair did actually sell and that gave me a bit of a zing.

These are the best of the pictures I took on Saturday.  Because there was a constant stream of people, it was actually one of the few fairs where I didn't have time during the day to take photos of other dealers, to get conversations going, or just sit and watch the parade of shoes go by.  (While I'm NOT a shoe junkie, I find that reading the clothing and shoes that people wear is a really fascinating time waster.  I think I have something in common with Hercule Poirot in that respect.)  I tried to take some photos of dealers, but without a flash on the iPhone and rotten lighting in the venue, they didn't turn out at all.

Later this week, I'm going to feature a few of the books that I took that people DID keep touching and picking up, but didn't buy. 

Why would I do that?

Well, just for the heck of it.  And because the books themselves are still COOL in my mind, even if they weren't cool enough for the customers on Saturday.