The Book of the Day: Cheap Thrills at the Used Bookstore

Restaurants may have the Catch of the Day, but at Old Saratoga Books, we have The Book of the Day. It has become a daily source of amusement and pleasure at our mom and pop used bookstore, not to mention a quasi-rivalry, to see which one of us can sell The Book of the Day when it is our turn to man the front desk. 

Sometimes the Book of the Day is one of our pricier books. It certainly perks us both up to have sold something in the three or four figures. Selling a nice Rockwell Kent illustrated Moby Dick was satisfying. Book of the Day kudos were earned for wrapping up an expensive cocktail book for a mixologist collector. Convincing a customer to splurge on a crisp copy of a signed modern first edition always brings a smile, but often the Book of the Day is something else entirely.

We salute each other whenever the Book of the Day is some honking big volume that resists easy shelving or which has thunked one of us in the head or tripped us up as it juts out from the shelves.  We both do our darndest to avoid taking them in but somehow these herniators and unwieldy tomes sneak in the shop. When these biblio-behemoths attract someone’s attention and go home with them, they are definitely the Book of the Day.

Selling the complete works of an author earns double Book of the Day honors. Sets of Dickens, Thackeray and O. Henry, the most common multi-volume works we encounter in our area, bring even more prestige, but I was never so chuffed as when I sold a set of 50 books about various kinds of antiques, written in Italian no less, to a woman who thought they would make a lovely engagement present for some lucky couple. The binding was naturally quite attractive, but they took up so much bookstore real estate and upstate New York is not chockablock with people who are fluent in Italian, so I had worried that they would molder on our shelves until Dan and I ourselves became antiques.

Selling a piece of ephemera earns high fives with us for the Book of the Day. Ephemera may be in vogue with the book buying public these days, but I find it hard to display in our traditional bookstore setup. Several years ago though, one of our talented customers bequeathed us with a handmade chest made from discarded card catalog drawers that we use for house much of our ephemeral stock, but mostly I just bag and tag (place in a plastic baggie and tack to a wooden bookshelf endcap) the items that are too small, wide or floppy to stand upright in the shelves, so they make us very happy when someone approaches the desk with thumb tack in hand.

The Book of the Day is often some poor book that has languished at the shop for years. Before we even opened our shop doors we responded to a Pennysaver ad about buying the stock of a retiring bookseller named Leonard. Some of these “Leonard” books, as we have referred to them now for over twenty years, somehow still populate the darkest recesses of our drama and poetry sections, no matter how many times we comb through and cull them. When a customer brings a Leonard book to the desk (I can recognize the former seller’s distinctive price code on the front flyleaf), I just about pull a rib muscle in quiet exultation.

Then there is that special breed of books that catch our fancy for reason of their exquisite jacket art or bindings or some strange title or subject matter that we face out or place in the shop windows. I love when these special books get adopted and validate my faith in their allure.

The Book of the Day could be some amazingly common title that someone brings to the desk and which I may reflexively think has been plunked from our 3-for-$1 bargain carts, but actually bears some audacious price (i.e., anything more than 33-1/3 cents). In this case, the Book of the Day might be Jane Fonda’s Workout Book, a cookbook by the Frugal Gourmet, a Da Vinci Code hardcover, or --be still my heart-- a self-help or business title. Bam! The customer is not only buying the Book of the Day but cleansing our shop.

And then there’s the Book of the Day category which makes each of us smile the most: when we sell the perfect book to the perfect person, like someone who relates that they have been looking for a certain title for years or to complete a series. Many Books of the Day have been purchased by one of our young customers who’s now in high school, who has been collecting books since he was two feet tall. His mom usually rewards him with a bookstore shopping trip after a successful semester and he always picks out interesting historical material, from biographies to Victorian store ledgers to ephemeral items. Whatever he buys is usually pretty cool and it’s so satisfying to ring up his book finds and see how enthused he is about them.

For all you booksellers out there, do you have Books of the Day?

NYC Antiquarian Book Fair 2015

Having attended and exhibited at a number of "provincial" book fairs, it was a special treat to visit the grandaddy of them all, the ABAA's New York Antiquarian Book Fair. My reconnaissance mission was overlaid with the pleasure of seeing some bookseller friends in action and having my daughter want to accompany me after so many years of thinking what her dad and I do is hopelessly pointless and boring.

 The Book Fair is the premiere attraction of New York City's Rare Book Week and had begun on Thursday with an evening preview. I arrived on Sunday, when I thought the crowds would be thinner and I could spend more time browsing. The atmosphere did seem a bit more subdued than I had imagined and there was more than a hint of general weariness among all the booksellers, given that this marathon event had begun with Wednesday setup and travel, and weeks of preparatory duties before that. I don't even want to think about the logistics of what some of the international dealers had to go through for this event.

While we were in line for tickets I ran into Molly Russakoff, of Molly's Books and Records in Philadelphia. Molly and I met last year at the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS). She and I were both anticipating looking at some amazing book booths, having such a greater knowledge of what it takes to acquire, present and sell antiquarian material - not to mention having to schlep it all in.

I spied a few other alumni from the CABS Class of 2014 who were assisting various ABAA booksellers, including Mr. Jeffrey Rovenpor, Noah Goldrach, and Nelson Harst.

CABS Director and Minneapolis-based bookseller Rob Rulon-Miller was there with an artful display of unusual dictionaries (one of his specialties), illustrated books and assorted antiquarian material. I had never seen a copy of Rockwell Kent's first illustrated book Architec-tonics: Tales of Tom Thumbtack, Architect and Rob noted that his copy is particularly rare for having retained its original dust jacket. That's Rob on the right with the lanyard and Rockwell at center stage on the lower bookcase shelf resplendent in his smashing light blue jacket.

Two of the most welcoming and humorous booksellers I know were anchoring a booth at the east side of the Armory: Ron Cozzi of Buffalo's Old Editions Bookstore and Jeffrey Bergman. For his 21st consecutive New York Book Fair, Ron was surrounded by an impressive array of Rivers of America series books, regimental histories and beautiful bindings, but he most tempted me with two titles; an 1890s Gollywog picture book for children- which, though lovely and interesting- makes Little Black Sambo look politically correct; and a 1970s MOMA art exhibition catalogue featuring a jacket illustration by Henri Matisse in bold black brushstrokes. Jeffrey was busy stacking up modern firsts for a customer while I was ogling Ron's books, but he was very gracious to interject a nice welcome.

The books and other items at the Fair were universally magnificent and worthy of homes in the most sophisticated book collection, library or museum. How about that page out of Virginia Woolf's passport, complete with her photograph and signature? Interested in a copy of Slaughter House Five bedazzled with an inscription and self-caricature by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., complete with his ever-present smoking cigarette? I saw illuminated leaves from the 15th century, engravings of the extinct dodo, a Figbash doll handmade by Edward Gorey, a hastily scribbled lyric from the pen of Bob Dylan, a sea of miniature books, an R. Crumb pen and ink of himself and his wife seated at a bar, Ernest Hemingway's first book of poems, medieval illustrations of popes with dragon bodies, antique maps, Big Bill Broonzy's autobiography, and a range of truly rare and beautiful items, all in impeccable condition. It was heady stuff.

While most items at the New York Book Fair were well out of my price range, I did pick up a nice book for my reference collection from Boston's Bromer Booksellers, where the range of Goreyana particularly entranced a certain graphic design student raised on The Gashlycrumb Tinies. 

Brattleboro, Vermont-based booksellers Matthew and Adrienne Raptis of Raptis Rare Books were there with a large and sumptuous array of biblio-eye candy; truly one of their gorgeous catalogs come to life. Classic literature, fine sets and books about economics and finance comprise the bulk of their stock and all the high spots were there in luscious condition.

I was delighted to stop in and peruse the offerings from two other CABS faculty members, Nina Musinsky of Gotham's own Musinsky Rare Books and Brian Cassidy, Books, whose antiquarian stock could not be any more disparate. Nina's inventory are jewel-like examples of early printed books, like almanacs with exquisite embroidered covers, illuminated book of hours, books with hand-colored plates of 18th century fashions, and incunabula.

Skipping ahead several centuries we get to the kind of material that Brian Cassidy unearths and preserves for us all: zines, mimeographed handbills, poetry chapbooks and broadsides, photograph archives, scrapbook albums and literary ephemera that document the "cultural detritus" of more contemporary times. Brian and Ian Kahn of Lux Mentis shared a booth, the most vivid and eye-catching of the Fair in my opinion, and Kahn took particular pleasure in ribbing Brian after I hailed him with "Perfessor Cassidy!". That coming from a man whose booth was crowned by a picture-poem worthy of the Red Hat Society.

I was eager to check in with Greg Gibson at Ten Pound Island Book Company, who, in addition to his brilliant writing in his own books and blog, had recently welcomed me so warmly into the fellowship of IOBA, but he was elsewhere, probably sniffing out amazing maritime history rarities from his colleagues. Greg has already blogged up his thoughts about the New York Book Fair (and the two shadow book fairs) here. You can also check out Rebecca Rego Barry's review of the three NY Book Fairs at Fine Books and Collections.

In addition to visiting the New York Book Fair, I packed in some more literary doings by attending an interactive production of Hamlet, rambling through Central Park to peek at the Hans Christian Andersen and Alice in Wonderland statues and examine the books, paintings and sculpture at The Frick Collection. A memorable weekend of wonderful books and events, indeed.