Our February 2012 Bookshop Hours

We are taking our annual break during the month of February at Old Saratoga Books and will be open for reduced hours: Fridays and Saturdays from 12 noon to 5 pm. Our shop will be back to the normal schedule above on Thursday, March 1st, 2012. 

New Arrivals in the Bookshop

Despite my entreaties over the phone and cyberspace to the many who contact us each day about wanting to donate or sell us books, ("We're REALLY quite full right now, so we're not buying all that much" is my usual refrain), there are boxes of books that arrive daily at Old Saratoga Books and Dan and I find that we can't resist a fresh batch of interesting books.

Sometimes it's a pile of orphaned books left on our doorstep when we open up and often it's a mound of garage sale leftovers, festooned with colorful price stickers. Most of these volumes end up in our to-be-donated-to-whatever-library-is-next-in-line-for-a-fundraiser-book-sale. Then there are those folks who show up with really lovely, unusual books that we've never seen before, and though the shelves are groaning from all the New Year declutterers that have brought us books, we simply pull out the check book and sigh.

In recent weeks we've bought many, many baking cookbooks from a former culinary student, boatloads of fishing and gardening books, a spate of books about film history and biographies about Hollywood's Golden Age, interesting pop-ups and books about paper art and origami, some antiquarian art and history titles, scads of classic science fiction paperbacks, and quite a nice pile of literary biographies. I've only put a handful of these titles online, so if you are interested in any of these areas, feel free to inquire about what's on the shelves.

Here's a little sampling of what these new collections contain:

 Ritz, Charles; Piper, John A Fly Fisher's Life NY Crown Publishers 1973. Reprint Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.Foreword by Ernest Hemingway, introduction by Arnold Gingrich. Large octavo. Green cloth binding. Many photos and illustrations. Jacket lightly tattered. In jacket protector. ; Large 8vo 9" - 10" tall; 285 pages.

 Lewis, C. S.; Como, James T. C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences
NY Macmillan Company 1979. First Printing Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. n jacket protector. Index, alphabetical index to the writings of C. S. Lewis, bibliography. A compilation of memories about C. S. Lewis from 22 of his friends. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 299 pages.

Reichert, Mickey Zucker; Nye, Jody Lynn Nye; Ranieri, Roman A. Anne Mccaffrey's the Unicorn Girl: The Illustrated Adventures. NY HarperPrism 1997. First Printing Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.  collection of short stories based on McCaffrey's character by Jody Nye, Mickey Zucker Reichert and Roman A. Ranieri and illustrated by various artists. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 136 pages.

 Mesnier, Roland; Malard, Christian All the Presidents' Pastries: Twenty-Five Years in the White House. Paris Flammarion 2004.First English Language Edition Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. irst printing of first English Language edition. Several pages of photographs. "This extraordinary success story-told by the hero himself-of a young French pastry chef who climbed his way to the top, embodies the great American dream. After working at the Savoy in London, the George V in Paris, the Princess in Bermuda, and the Homestead in Virginia, Roland Mesnier took on the job of a lifetime as pastry chef to the White House. He provides behind-the-scenes insight into the characters, tastes, and obsessions of the five presidents and first ladies he served during his 25 years in Washington. Seventeen easy-to-follow recipes include the favorite desserts of all five presidents and their families. " (rear cover blurb) ; 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall; 344 pages

 
 Haddon, Kathleen Cat's Cradles from Many Lands Longmans, Green and Company 1911 First Edition Hardcover Very Good.live green cloth binding with cat's cradle figure and lettering stamped in white on front boards. Index, bibliography, many illustrations. Gift inscription penciled on front free endpaper, boards lightly rubbed. Many examples of string figures, or cat's cradles from cultures around the world, including Alaskan Inuit, the Torres Straits, Andaman Islands, Yoruba tribes, Navaho Indian tribes and others. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 95 pages.

Palestrant, S. Practical Papercraft: Over 400 Useful and Decorative Projects for Fun and Profit
NY Homecrafts 1950 Hardcover Good in Good dust jacket. any photos and illustrations. Jacket flaps glued to endpapers and endpapers darkened from the adhesive, usual library stamps and markings. Learn how to make toys, costumes, flowers, lampshades, masks, boxes, stage scenery, puppets and party decorations out of paper. ; Ex-Library; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 119 pages.

Kendall, Elizabeth The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s
NY Knopf 1990. First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Good dust jacket
Jacket price-clipped and curled at edges, foxing to page tops and bottoms. Index, bibliography, notes, photos. A look at the changing role of women, romantic love and how films mirrored these changes. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 285 pages.

Gorling, A. ; Meyer, Bl; Woltmann, A. Art Treasures of Germany: A Collection of the Most Important Pictures of the Galleries of Dresden, Cassel, Brunswick, Berlin, Munich and Vienna. with Portraits of the Most Celebrated Masters and Explanatory and Biographical Notices
Boston Samuel Walker and Company 1873 Hardcover Good. Half-bound in morocco with title and owner name stamped in gilt on spine. Contains 120 engravings after paintings by various European masters, including Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Murillo, Holbein, Caravaggio and many, many lesser known Dutch and German artists.

 
 Stevens, C. F. ; Ryskind, Morrie; Englander, James The Home Movie Scenario Book
NY Richard Manson 1927 First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Fair dust jacket
Gray boards with black cloth backstrip. Pages toned, jacket soiled and tattered. In jacket protector. Several pages of advertisements for camera stores and movie theatres. A collection of twenty plots for home movies in a silent film format, as well as chapters on how to produce, direct, act in, provide makeup, sets, lighting, and editing these home productions. Ryskind was wrote and helped produce Broadway musicals (he got a Pulitzer for "Of Thee I Sing", written in collaboration with George Gershwin) , an award-winning Hollywood screenplay author and "friendly witness" for the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947.; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 169 pages.

 Thomas, Graham Stuart The Graham Stuart Thomas Rose Book:
Sagaponack, NY Sagapress 2004 0711223971 / 9780711223974 Revised Edition Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.  revised, one volume edition of Thomas' trilogy of rose reference books: The Old Shrub Roses, Shrub Roses of Today and Climbing Roses Old and New. 158 color plates. Index, bibliography, line illustrations. ; 4to 11" - 13" tall; 359 pages.
 

What I read at The Book Trout in 2011

Man, I read some really great books this year. I found some wonderful new authors courtesy of some Old Saratoga Book customers (I know, I know, I try to press books into their hands but I always seem to get several recommendations packed into my book bag by the end of a working day).

I managed to devour 96 books last year, which is less than I would like, but more than I thought. I am finding that my pre-menopausal bouts of insomnia are very useful for quiet, concentrated bits of reading and that I almost look forward to my times along snuggled up with cats and dog and a riveting book during the middle of the dark night.

There were of course lots of mysteries, travel memoirs, biblionovels, culinary titles, layman's science and biographies in my 2011 reading pile, but I also squeezed in some odd books here and there. I finally found time to read through the prolific Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles mystery series, which feature great herbal and gardening tidbits. I most enjoyed savoring the seven Armand Gamache mystery novels by Canadian author Louise Penny that unravel murderous deeds in Montreal and the quiet Quebec village of Three Pines. Penny studs her books with poetry, antiques, history, great food and drink, art and there's even a quirky bookstore owner in the mix. Thank you John P. for insisting that I move these books up front and center on my bedside pile!

I finally got a chance to read the bestselling Steig Larsson series about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and found myself having to focus on slowing down and not just skimming ahead. They are very good, and I did find myself hoping that the late author has indeed stuffed a lot of plot summaries and notes in the computer held by his late partner so that I can read more stories about these unusual protagonists (and what about Lisbeth's twin sister?).

Alongside oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer I plowed through the earth's eleven gyres, many eddies, several colossal garbage patches and numerous debris-strewn beaches, courtesy of his book "Flotsametrics". I journeyed to various tourist hellholes with extreme travel writer Chuck Thompson; recoiled in horror at the bibliomania gone bad of "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much", "The Poet and the Murderer" and in "Stuff"; delighted in learning about arachnid evolution with "Spider Silk"; shivered in a frozen cabin in the Maine woods with raven researcher and ultramarathoner Bernd Heinrich and enjoyed philosophical ruminations in Edinburgh with Alexander McCall Smith's heroine Isabel Dalhousie. Overall, a very exciting year!

Here's the list of what I read in 2011, in mostly chronological order.

2011 Reading List

The Second Mouse, by Archer Mayor

An Embarrassment of Mangoes: A Caribbean Interlude, by Ann Vanderhoof

In the Kitchen, by Monica Ali

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Distant Mirrors: America as a Foreign Culture, by Philip R. DeVita & James D. Armstrong

Lunch in Paris, by Elizabeth Bard

China Bayles mystery series by Susan Wittig Albert: Thyme for Death, Witches' Bane, Hangman's Root, Rosemary Remembered, Rueful Death, Love Lies Bleeding, Chile Death, Lavender Lies, Mistletoe Man, Bloodroot, Indigo Dying, A Dilly of a Death, Dead Man's Bones, Bleeding Hearts, Spanish Dagger, Nightshade, Wormwood, Holly Blues, Mourning Gloria

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession, by Allison Hoover Bartlett

Cook Until Desired Tenderness, by Cleo Papanikolas

The Noble Legacy: The Story of Gilbert Clifford Noble, Cofounder of the Barnes & Noble and Noble & Noble Book Companies, by Betty Noble Turner

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, by Jennifer 8. Lee

Dodie Goes Shopping and Other Adventures, by Dodie Kazanjian

The Poet and the Murderer: A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art
of Forgery, by Simon Woorall

The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl

U is for Undertow, by Sue Grafton

Coop: A Family, A Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good Egg, by Michael Perry

Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen and Cadillac Jack, by Larry McMurtry

Soul of a Lion: One Woman's Quest to Rescue Africa's Wildlife Refugees, by Barbara Bennett

Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants, by Samuel Thayer

Tahoe Beneath the Surface: The Hidden Stories of America's Largest Mountain Lake, by Scott Lankford

Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating, by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig

Boogalo on 2nd Avenue, by Mark Kurlansky

Conservation Treatment Methodology, by Barbara Applebaum

Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries by Louise Penny: Still Life, A Fatal Grace, The Cruelest Month, A Rule for Murder, The Brutal Telling, Bury Your Dead, A Trick of the Light

A Sloth in the Family, by Hermann Tirler

Savannah Blues, by Mary Kay Andrews

The Complete Fawlty Towers, by John Cleese and Connie Booth

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, by Raghuram G. Rajan

On Rue Tatin, by Susan Hermann Loomis

Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous, by Don Foster

Cooking for the Common Good: The Birth of a Natural Foods Soup Kitchen, by Larry Stettner and Bill Morrison

Dave Barry Does Japan, by Dave Barry

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science, by Phillip Manning

Death of a Poison Pen, Death of an Addict, Death of a Gentle Lady, Death of a Witch, Death of a Valentine, and Death of a Macho Man, by M.C. Beaton

Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World, by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

Warmly Inscribed: The New England Book Forger and Other Book Tales, by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

The Drowning Room, by Michael Pye

Beethoven's Only Beloved: Josephine! by John E. Klapproth

Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, by Michael Sims

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? by Morgan Spurlock
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, by Ruth Reichl

To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism, by Chuck Thompson

Driving with Dead People, by Monica Holloway

A Year in the Maine Woods, by Bernd Heinrich

Entertaining Disasters, by Nancy Spiller

The Wimbledon Poisoner, by Nigel Williams

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson

Perfect Sax, by Jerrilyn Farmer

Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith: The Sunday Philosophy Club: Friends, Lovers, and Chocolate; The Right Attitude to Rain; The Careful Use of Compliments, The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, The Lost Art of Gratitude and The Charming Quirks of Others

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee

Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home, by Eduardo Machado and Michael Domitrovich

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pepin

The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, by William Nothdurft and Josh Smith

Drawing Conclusions and A Question of Belief, by Donna Leon

Coin Street Chronicles: Memoirs of an Evacuee from London's Old South Bank, by Gwen Southgate

Outlaw Cook, by John and Matt Lewis Thorne

Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co., by Jeremy Mercer

Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scagliano

**So what did you read this past year that was really wonderful?  Leave me a comment below so I can add to my teetering book pile!

Chronicle Book Fair in Glens Falls, New York

It was the second time round for Old Saratoga Books as an exhibitor at the Chronicle Book Fair at the lovely Queensbury Hotel in downtown Glens Falls. Last year I brought way too many books and way too many shelves and this time reined in my inventory, bringing only two folding shelves to put atop my table (since people never look below their navel as I found out last year) and 12 boxes of books. Still, I think this was 3 boxes too many, as I didn't have an ability to flop out all the books I wanted. Indeed, a few boxes never even got unpacked and served as stands beside my table for my ephemera display.

And, as was the case last year, what sold were books that were facing out. That Robert Sabuda pop-up book (with the yellow star on the front cover) sold almost immediately, and my Ernest Hemingway photoessay (top shelf left) caught a bibliophile's eye from across the room. Other interesting titles sold throughout the day included a Puerto Rican cookbook, a Looking Glass edition of George MacDonald's "The Princess and Curdie" (with Edward Gorey typography), biographies of James Thurber, Dashiell Hammett, Mama Cass and Robert Fulton, Roald Dahl juvenile fiction in hardcover, Adirondack history, some old postcards, gardening books, a signed children's book by William Kennedy, a book on Irish pubs, and assorted other music, cooking and literary titles.

My bestsellers, however, as was the case two weeks ago at the Albany Antiquarian Book Fair, were the vintage paperbacks. The more lurid or ridiculous the cover art, the better they sold. One older lady was particularly funny when she pointed to a copy of Erskine Caldwell's "Tobacco Road" and told me this was a "spicy" book that was passed around back in her high school days. Now, even children's programming shows more cleavage (bust and butt) than that paperback cover and surely this novel would seem tame by most readers' standards.

The crowds at the Chronicle Book Fair were nice from 10:30 am (many browsers drifted in early) to about 2 pm and then rather precipitously dropped off. This left a little time to sneak away to chat with Gluten Free cookbook author Amy Rota-Poulin and my fellow bookseller, Victoria Garlandia at her Three Wise Women booth to snag a few local history titles.

I will definitely be partcipating  in next year's fair, as the sales were good and this event gets the word out about our bookshop to a devoted group of bibliophiles. Next year I will bring a big sign though, with our store name, address and slug about buying and selling used and rare books, as people don't seem to notice the bookmarks and brochures I strew about my booth.

My Continuing Education at the 37th Annual Albany Antiquarian Book and Ephemera Fair

So many books, so many postcards, so many trade cards and posters, and so little time...That was the vibe at yesterday's Albany Antiquarian Book and Ephemera Fair at the Washington Avenue Armory. Organized this year by Garry Austin

Garry Austin on the left, unidentified but very gracious and  friendly bookseller on the right

of Wilmington, Vermont-based Austin's Antiquarian Books, it was Old Saratoga Books' first appearance as a bookseller and the overall experiment proved successful indeed. I got to see many familiar faces among the exhibitors and browsers and there was steady traffic throughout the six-hour show.

A bibliophile browsing Owl Pen Books' booth

On the Saturday set-up day, I found that other booksellers swooped in even before I could unpack my four wooden folding shelves and eleven boxes of books, so I made a few quick sales to subsidize the exhibitor fee. One sale was a cool Civil War broadside with a map of the shrinking Confederate states, exhorting New York State voters to support Lincoln's mandatory draft and other military strategies which then Governor Horatio Seymour was criticizing. The other nice sale was an 1830s biography of Lemuel Haynes, an African-American minister (the first one to serve a white congregation) and abolitionist who lived in various parts of upstate New York and Vermont.

Two views of the goods at Old Saratoga Books' booth

 
Most of the books and paper items I brought to the Fair were not as rare as these items, though, and I had a display of  more modestly-priced volumes that I thought would be of interest to a wider range of buyers. I sold some antique children's books, a book about whiskey, a handwritten Victorian-era journal, some Jack London and Charles Lindbergh, a Richard Brautigan first edition and a smattering of other cookbook, music and art titles, but the big sellers were the selection of vintage paperbacks I had strewn about for eye candy. These were particularly appreciated by the 20-somethings in the crowd, who alternately scooped them up because of the campy cover art or because they were oddball titles. I also brought what little ephemera we've accumulated over the years and these little pamphlets, postcards and advertisements were a popular item for us as well.

There were quite a lot of lovely books to peruse at my colleagues' tables. I was tickled by the antique medical calendar offered by Evie Eysenburg which featured elves with giant skull heads mixing up pharmaceutical potions.

Evie Eisenburg's ghoulish druggist elves' calendar

Her booth partner, Patricia Reilly, also had a colorful collection of eye catchers, including a tremendously intricate homemade Valentine. Patricia also very kindly loaned me some cash when I noticed that I had forgotten my stack of  $1s and $5s for making change when I had my first customer. She truly has not one, but two hearts of gold!

Patricia Reilly and her beautiful antique Valentine (center of case)

Both Evie and Patricia seemed to have a nice stream of customers flipping through their binders full of trade cards, advertising posters, folk art and unusual ephemera, and it seemed to be the general consensus among other booksellers that I spoke with that ephemera sells quite well at the Albany Fair.  I will definitely keep my eye out for more papery items when I'm out book hunting, as ephemera only dribbles into the bookshop, most usually retrieved from the pages of our incoming books.

Sometimes retail can be like this.

Rounding out the other ell of our U-shaped booth, was my new biblio-buddy Anne Brockschmidt of Carnegie Hill Books of Manhattan, which specializes in architecture, decorative arts and design. She had some beautiful bindings and interesting titles and ended the day happy with her day's business.

Anne Brockschmidt of Carnegie Hill Books

My neighbor to the north was another first-time exhibitor at the Albany Fair, Mark Brumberg of Boomerang Books.  Mark owned the Globe Bookshop in Northampton, Mass. and then worked at the nearby National Yiddish Book Center before starting his own rare books business. (Read the Book Trout review of Aaron Lansky's "Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books"). He has a great inventory of modern first editions, many of them signed, including this great copy of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried".  You also gotta love a guy who whoops when he finds an unexpected cache of his wife's cookies stashed in his lunch bag.

Mark Brumberg of Boomerang Books

My New York colleague, Will Monie of Cooperstown, who nudged me to get untethered from the bookstore and exhibit at the Albany Fair, was on hand with an impressive display of unusual books. Will really makes great use of his exhibit space, with shelving lining both sides and ends of his booth and he had a lot of trade back and forth whenever I glanced his way during this event. Will also organizes the annual Cooperstown Antiquarian Book Fair in June, and I am mulling over whether to become untethered again for that one.

Cooperstown's Finest, Bookseller Will Monie

And now to reveal the most interesting bit of conversation overheard at the Albany Fair. There was a snappily-dressed book dealer whose name I never did get, who was chatting behind me right before the line of browsers was unleashed who made me laugh out loud when I heard that he "was really into promiscuous pricing". I never did get the chance to run over and ask him to explain that one to this Book Fair newbie, but to hear more of this kind of lively talk, see huge numbers of gorgeously illustrated and bound volumes, pore over interesting and esoteric titles, and engage in some spectacular people watching (what is it with biblio-folk and their chapeaux?) you'll have to wait around until the 38th Annual Albany Book Fair.

Albany Antiquarian Book Fair - October 23, 10 am to 4 pm

We will be exhibiting some of our books and other papery items at the Albany Antiquarian Book Fair at the Washington Avenue Armory in downtown Albany this Sunday, October 23, from 10 am to 4 pm. Admission is $6.00. For directions, information on the 40 or so other participating booksellers and more information about the Fair check out their website.

It's Old Saratoga Books' first time as an exhibitor at the Fair and Rachel will be there with an assortment of titles from our 50,000 volume inventory, including some volumes that we have recently acquired and not yet offered for sale in our shop, including an interesting New York State Civil War broadside, many vintage and antique children's books, and some interesting horse and fly fishing titles.

See you at the Fair!  For a peek at last year's Albany Book Fair, you can investigate the Book Trout's view as a visitor here.

See You at the 2nd Annual Empire State Book Festival, Sat. April 2

Old Saratoga Books will be on the road at the Second Annual Empire State Book Festival this coming Saturday, April 2nd, from 10 am to 4:30 pm in Albany at the Empire State Plaza. We will be manning a booth with a selection of our books somewhere at the base of the Egg and Empire State Convention Center Meeting Rooms.

This free literary festival is sponsored by the New York Library Association and will have a host of other exhibitors as well as workshops, lectures and kid-friendly activities all centered around reading and literacy.

Babysitter's Club author Anne M. Martin will be giving an address and book signing at 10 am and singer/songwriter/author Roseanne M. Cash will be giving a lecture at 3:45 pm. Other notable authors and illustrators involved in various workshops and seminars include Pamela Sargent, Paula Fox, S.J. Rozan, Laurie Halse Anderson, Donna Andrews, Mordicai Gerstein, David Hadju, and many others. You can see the full list of Festival Literati at this link here.

Free workshops include such topics as book collecting, science fiction, how to get published, children's story times, writing for teens, mystery, romance, historical fiction about New York City, female detectives, writing about pets, graphic novels, poetry and much more.

If you are attending the festival, be sure to stop by and say hello and peruse some of the special books we are bringing to the festival!

March Book Sale: 50% Off Science Fiction and Fantasy

Greetings Earthlings.  During the month of March, Old Saratoga Books will be discounting its online Science Fiction and Fantasy titles by 50%.  Authors include Brian Aldiss, Lloyd Alexander, William Gibson, James Blish, Otis Adelbert Kline, Nancy Kress, Stanislaw Lem, Isaac Asimov and many others.

To check out the list of sale books, go to our website, www.oldsaratogabooks.com and click through the Browse by Category link on the left hand tab. Or you can click on this link. Book prices are automatically discounted on the website and the sale price is noted in red.

New Arrivals at Old Saratoga Books

Though our shop is closed during the month of February (and the store thermostat is set low, low, low much to store cat Sam's consternation) Dan and I are back and forth filling Internet orders, cleaning, moving sections around and generally doing all those biblio-maintenance tasks that cant' be done when the shop is open.

We are also going through many boxes of books that we have bought over the last year and stashed in the basement, so when we open, there will lots of new (used) titles for our customers to peruse. In the meantime, here's some of the newest and most interesting books we've catalogued:

The Irish Beauties, by E. Barrington, [Beck, L. Adams]Garden City, NY Doubleday, Doran 1931 First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Good dust jacket. Decorative black cloth binding. Corners bumped, jacket dampstained and chipped, pages toned. In jacket protector.

Historical fiction based on the lives of two penniless Irish sisters, Elizabeth and Maria Gunning, who were the belles of mid-18th century London. Elizabeth married the Duke of Hamilton and became the first Baroness Hamilton of Hameldon, and sister Maria married the 6th Earl of Coventry, though her continued use of arsenic and lead in various cosmetic preparations led to her death at aged 27 in 1760. 310 pages
Price: 15.00.



Mary McDowell, Neighbor, by Howard E. Wilson, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1928 First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Fair dust jacket. Gray cloth binding. Index, several photos. Foreword by Jane Addams. Jacket price-clipped and tattered and missing large section along top edge of front jacket panel. In jacket protector.

A biography of one of "America's greatest social workers" and founder of the University of Chicago Settlement House. Many interesting historical bits about Chicago in the early 20th century and its poorest neighborhoods, including the horrific conditions in Packingtown. 235 pages. Price: 60.00 (on sale for 42.00 through the month of February, as are all of our biographies).


Poems and Portraits, by Christopher La Farge, NY: Coward-McCann 1940 First Edition Hardcover Very Good in Good dust jacket. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper. Tan cloth binding. Boards lightly worn, jacket tattered and chipped. In jacket protector. A 1955 Christmas card containing a verse by the author taped to front endpapers. Christmas card is inscribed by La Farge on the verso.63 pages. Price: 35.00



Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons, by Ben Fong-Torres, NY: St. Martin's Griffin 1998. Revised Edition Softcover Very Good. Index, discography, bibliography, several pages of photos. A biography of the short, hard life of Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Fallen Angels rocker Gram Parsons. 244 pages. Price: 10.00



Ohio Art: The World of Toys, by Jim Gilcher and Lisa Kerry, Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing 1998. First Printing Softcover Very Good. Many color photos by Adam Griffith. A great reference for the toy collector, which includes a wide range of colorful lithographed toys made by the Ohio Art Company from the 1920s-80s. 160 page. Price: 15.00


Remagen and Other Rhine Crossings, by Walter Niedermayer, Indiana, PA: A.G. Halldin Pub. Co 1993. Softcover Very Good. The 1944 capture of the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, Germany by the 9th Armored Division is recounted here. Maps, photos. Author photo on rear cover. Bibliography. Covers scuffed, else a clean, tight copy. 58 page. Price: 18.00



The Wood-Peasant's Grandchild, by Marg. Lenk. Johannes Herrmann 1924 Hardcover Very Good. Green boards. Many illustrations by Ant. Baworowski. A tale about an old man and his orphaned grandson, Fridolin, called Friedel, who are evicted from their Salzburg home by an evil Archbishop. The tale takes place in 1730. Covers lightly worn, else a clean, tight copy. 168 pages. Price: 15.00



Putman Style, by Stephane Gerschel, NY: Assouline 2005. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. Boards rounded at spine and corners. Signed by Putman on the title page. Many photos and illustrations. Translated from the French by Linda Jarosiewicz and Elena Luoto. Foreword by Francois Russo. Interviews with various Putman associates throughout.

A look at the life and work of French designer Andree Putman, who studied piano until the age of 19, when she went to work for a French fashion magazine. She later worked for the French department store Prisunic, then the Mafia Agency, and then worked with Didier Grumbach to launch Createurs et Industriels, a shop providing fashion designers with ready-to-wear sales. She later founded Ecart, a furniture company and began designing residential and commercial spaces for Karl Lagerfeld, Thierry Mugler, Michel Guy, Steve "Studio 54" Rubell, the Centre d'Arts Plastiques Contemporains, Air France (she redesigned the interior of the Concorde) , Ebel, Balenciaga, film director Peter Greenaway and the French Soccer league, among others.
Price: 65.00



Burke's Complete Cocktail & Drinking Recipes With Recipes for Food Bits for the Cocktail Hour, by Harman Burney Burke, NY: Books, Inc. 1941 Later Printing Hardcover Good. Small black moire hardcover binding with gilt lettering and cocktail clock design (drinks start at 6 o'clock, apparently) on front boards. Index, several blank pages at rear for "My Own Recipes" with two of them filled in with previous owner's handwritten recipes for "Original Ramos Gin Fizz" and "Sagerac". Boards worn, one inch tear at crown of spine, owner name and date on copyright page. 125 pages. Price: 20.00



Toadstools, Mushrooms, Fungi: Edible and Poisonous; One Thousand American Fungi; How to Select and Cook the Edible; How to Distinguish and Avoid the Poisonous, with Full Botanic Descriptions, by Charles McIlvaine and Robert K. MacAdam, West Glover, VT: Something Else Press 1973 0871100932 / 9780871100931 Reprint Hardcover Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.

A facsimile reprint of the 1902 revised edition. White cloth binding. Jacket lightly soiled and price-clipped, fly specks on page tops. In jacket protector. Photos. "How to select and cook the edible. How to distinguish and avoid the poisonous". 729 pages. Price: 25.00

Booking at Yellow House Books in Great Barrington, MA

Last Fall I had my annual Ladies Weekend getaway with my band of girlfriends. We've been vacationing together each November for the last twenty years, and while I haven't been able to attend each jaunt, it's always a treat to get away to a new locale, reconnect with my ladies and have a giant gab fest back at our hotel rooms. And drink copious amounts of wine and sample new varieties of cheese.

This past November we picked Great Barrington, Massachusetts as our destination and while most of our party enjoyed the nearby shopping outlets (blah!), my buddy Linda and I headed for our favorite kind of shopping: bookhunting.


We were both able to while away a pleasant couple of hours at Yellow House Books, a small used and rare bookstore located at 252 Main Street in downtown Great Barrington. The shop is small, but has a carefully selected range of interesting and unusual books. The front room has a nice selection of art and music, while the second room contains a fine array of antique children's books and illustrated volumes.

I spent most of my time in the innermost third room, which contained the history and cookbook sections, picking up some local history titles for the shop and a handful of unusual books for my personal collection. I was psyched to find a signed copy of John Thorne's book of autobiographical food essays "Outlaw Cook", a Sherlock Holmes cookbook and a delightful
"Cookbook for Booksellers", by Craig Claiborne, which was a promotional book handed out by the publisher to booksellers perhaps en masse at a large book fair or individually by a book sales rep to bookseller clients. This bibliophilic treat contains book quotes and recipes for such literary eats as Proust's Madeleines, a Virginia Woolf-inspired Boeuf en Daube, Clifton Fadiman's Yorkshire Buck, Lord Byron's Oyster Stew, Bookbinder's Soup, Tobias Smollett's Vitello
Tonnato and a Madras Curry for William Makepeace Thackeray.


The bookshop also had a nice selection of Modern Library editions (see above photo) which are one of my husband's favorite things to collect, so I will be bringing him back here to visit soon.

Yellow House Books is owned by Bonnie and Bob Benson, who were doing a brisk business on the Saturday morning I was there, so I did not get a chance to chat with them. The shop is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 am to 5:30 pm and on Sundays from noon to 5 pm. The phone number is: 413-528-8227.