Vermont Booksellers Spring Fair and Book Hunting in Vermont

My good friend Barb seemed to have an inordinate amount of fun assisting me with manning a booth at the Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair last September. She readily agreed to come along on a joint book hunting and genealogical research expedition to Burlington, Vermont this past weekend. Old Saratoga Books was signed up as an exhibitor at the Vermont Antiquarian Booksellers Association Spring Fair on Saturday, April 8th at the Burlington Hilton and Barb was interested in doing some family history research at the University of Vermont Library's Special Collections, so we made it an extended weekend.

We started our journey on Thursday with a trip up Vermont's historic Route 7A from Bennington to Dorset, stopping along the way at thrift shops, antique stores, and the Cheese House to load up on books, treasures, and lunch (some great Mustard and Ale Cheddar and lavash crackers). Switching onto Route 7, we made our way to the beautiful town of Wallingford, Vermont, and the Helping Hands consignment shop where we really scored. We loaded up on some great clothing finds (polka dot dresses for the both of us for upcoming graduations and weddings), some books, a funky 50s lamp shaped like a leaf ($1!), elegant pajamas (Vermont Country Store donations in pristine condition), artwork, and even a spoon rest painted with a rat design. The Rutland Goodwill was huge and Barb was thrilled to find a hand model for her knitting creations and we both scooped up some unique artwork.

It was a dark and stormy night by the time we rolled into our hotel on the outskirts of Burlington so we caught a late Korean dinner at Naru and tucked ourselves into bed for a full day of genealogical research the next day. Barb was tracking down some ancestors at the University of Vermont's Bailey-Howe Library Special Collections and they had five boxes of files awaiting her. I was her scanning assistant and read a book while she took notes and burbled excitedly over some finds among the letters, legal documents, ledgers, and other historical items they provided. The staff was wonderfully accommodating (we were able to personally thank one of the librarians again the next day when she came into our booth at the Book Fair) and the scanner was a thing of beauty: easy to use, free, and delicate documents were immediately emailed to Barb to examine later in detail.

The Special Collections area had a small exhibit of Vermont patent medicine broadsides which were fun to examine. I also found a small stash of free books- library discards- conveniently located on the way to the rest room, so that was a plus. Note that parking is at a premium on the UVM Campus, and you will have to hike a bit (for us it was in the driving rain, which was at least not snow) from the visitor's parking lot. We warmed up later that afternoon with a Mexican-El Salvadorian-Filipino lunch at Esperanza Restaurante, which we both recommend. Good tamales, ceviche, and lumpia!

We still had a free afternoon, so we pointed the van north and headed half an hour up to St. Albans, Vermont, an historic town with a vibrant Main Street and popped into The Eloquent Page. Donna Howard is the longtime owner of this bookstore which carries new and used books, with a specialty in books about costume and fashion. Her store is in a Victorian storefront with patterned tin ceilings, comfy reading chairs, and soaring shelves packed with unusual and reasonably-priced books. I got some great titles for some upcoming catalogues on 20th century history and of course, some books for my own home library.

Donna is also the Book Fair manager for VABA's Spring Fair, so she was busy with last minute arrangements on top of her bookstore duties. The Eloquent Page has strong sections in Vermontiana, American and European history, cookbooks, and children's books, as well as a good selection of fiction, organized by genre and title. A great shop for readers and collectors, and even other book dealers!

Saturday saw a frosting of snow for the opening of this Spring Book Fair, but we were undaunted and got there early to set up and prowl around other dealers' books. I was testing out two new face-out bookshelves that my husband made (er, copied) from John Hess at Catamount Books. John's booth is a thing of beauty, with lots of eye-catching dust jackets and book covers, and he was correct in stating that this shelf design allows sellers to bring less but sell more.

That's John and Cheryl Hess of Catamount Books in the above photo. And below you will see me in the Old Saratoga Books booth with a version of John's wonderful shelves. (photo courtesty of VABA)

I did sell about 1/4 of the books that were facing out on those shelves, which was impressive. Eye candy sells. Military and Adirondack history sold well, as well as older children's books, cookbooks, Vermont items, antique travel, and ephemera.

The crowds were strong for the first four hours, but then sales and attendance dropped dramatically and the last two hours really crawled. That's where having a buddy like Barb was key, as she graciously let me steal away to talk shop and peruse other dealers' offerings. I found some nice antiquarian literature and women's history at Jean Hopkins' booth, a funky bound volume of phrenology at Fred Wright's booth (that's Fred and son Chris in photo below), and a great broadside temperance ditty at Jean Tudhope's booth.

The VABA Spring Book Fair was a good "provincial" fair for buying and selling. Loading in and out at the Hilton was easy, with no bottlenecks other than the hotel's revolving door. You had to time things just right to blast through with your loaded boxes, particularly in my case since I had forgotten my hand cart and was making use of one of the Hilton's ginormous luggage trolleys.

Barb and I finished up our book hunting adventures the next day with a trip to Burlington's ReSource nonprofit thrift shop. The books were plentiful and cheap and I loaded up on lots of store stock. Barb scored again with a worm factory for her garden. We finally had some nice spring weather to drive in and the ride back was sunny and gorgeous. Another cheese and cracker lunch at Dakin Farm in Ferrisburgh, VT sustained us until we could get to The Bookmobile, in Rutland, VT.  I forgot to take pictures, but it was a great space full of new and used books. I bought a nice stack of older cookbooks, 60s music, poetry, and natural history, and then it was back in the van heading south for a nice homeward welcome.

Booking at Austin's Antiquarian Books in Wilmington, Vermont

After a hectic holiday bookselling season it was a much-needed treat for Dan and I to visit Garry and Karen Austin at their jewel-box store, Austin's Antiquarian Books, just up the road a-piece in Wilmington, Vermont. I've known Garry for several years now, as an exhibitor at some of the regional book fairs he organizes, and have always enjoyed his combination of professionalism and teasing banter during the setups and breakdowns. After driving past his bookstore twice now on my way between Bennington and Brattleboro, and looking wistfully in my rear view mirror (but not for too long, because Route 9 is a bit twisty), I was determined to get out for a visit.

Garry and Karen graciously agreed to meet us at their shop on one of our mutual days off (or was this my first "or by appointment" antiquarian bookstore visit?) for a quick tour and then we headed out for a bookseller's lunch. Their shop has two floors full of beautiful bindings and interesting antiquarian titles. There are all sorts of book alcoves tucked into corners of the first floor, crowned by large front room with a majestic stone fireplace. At all turns there were interesting displays of handsome and tempting books and it was hard to break away from browsing and be social.

Some of the bookstore specialties include books about Theodore Roosevelt, Western Americana, flyfishing, natural history and travel, and each had its own nook.

The Book Trout couldn't resist this shot of a print of its cousin, the Brook Trout, hanging on the wall.

I headed upstairs for a bit of browsing with my good friend BABS, the Books about Books section, and looked over a wide selection of literary biographies, gardening books and history titles. Every book was in impeccable condition, and each section was populated with interesting choices in a range of prices. You can browse 2,000 or so books that have been been catalogued on the shop's website, but the serious bibliophile will want to head over in person to ferret out those hard-to-find titles in the Austin's specialties.

The shop is spacious, well-lighted and invites luxurious browsing. I picked up a few interior design tips for our shop, but, mindful of our hosts' post-lunch need to get back to packing last-minute holiday book orders, I had to rein in my desire to while away the rest of a very pleasant afternoon in the stacks and headed out with our party of four for some local grub and book shop talk. The Austins ran several used and rare bookshops in Maine before opening their present location in 1993 and it was great to hear their stories about bookselling in the pre-Internet era.

Austin's Antiquarian Books is open Thursday through Sunday from 10:30 to 6. The shop is located at 123 West Main Street (Vermont Route 9) overlooking the Deerfield River. Garry and Karen are open all five seasons (summer, fall, winter, mud and spring) and can be reached by phone: 802-464-8438 or by email: mail@austinsbooks.com.

Booking at Catamount Books in Arlington, Vermont

I recently had a lovely autumnal book hunting trip with a bookseller friend, Richard Mori of Mori Books, across the New York border to Arlington, Vermont. Home of artist Norman Rockwell, this picture perfect town boasts the classic beauty of a mountainous landscape, lovely older homes and winding streets.

Arlington is also home to Catamount Books, the open shop owned by my book fair buddy John Hess at 198 Pleasant Street.

That's John in the above photo silhouetted on the second floor space of Catamount Books. John used to have a shop along Main Street in downtown Arlington, but recently built this garage/bookshop and moved his 15,000+ tomes upstairs (many more await his ministrations in the first floor storage area).

There's a better picture of John at his Catamount command center, a warren of shelves filled with a terribly interesting selection of books in all subjects. My bookseller buddy went one way, I went another, and we ended up spending three hours combing through the stacks, instead of the hour we had planned for our visit.

John's got a surprising amount of books packed into this well-lit space and there were gems hidden all through the shelves. I kept finding books that I had been searching for myself and for customers, and there were new intriguing titles that were inexpensively priced so that even I, a bookseller fairly low down in the biblio-food web, could purchase them for resale without qualms.

John's got a great eye for unusual subjects, lovely bindings and titles that I've not come across in my years of bookhunting. I picked up three boxes of treasures, including several titles by Gene Stratton-Porter, regional history, illustrated classics, a fun book on spiritualist Eusapia Palladino, children's books, geology titles, and many more for shop stock. Richard found many books in his specialty areas of Scouting and children's literature and we both came away very pleased with our purchases.

Bookshop hours are Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 12:30 pm to 5 pm, though John advises that it is best to call ahead (802-282-9769) to make sure of these hours or to set up an alternate appointment since he and his delightful wife Cheryl might be out having fun with their passel of grandchildren (I saw two of them in residence and can verify that they were awfully cute).

A Mighty Rain Dampens the 2014 Brattleboro Book Fair

A jewel box location, glittering book offerings, autumn leaves nearly at peak and a tie-in with a four-day literary festival were a powerful combination, but not enough to overcome torrential rains at the Vermont Fall Book Fair this past Saturday at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center.

Jeff Bergman was there with a stellar selection of modern firsts, signed books and photographs and a great collection of books about books and bookseller memoirs, (though he told me the "really great stuff" doesn't go on the road with him. Can only imagine those biblio treasures.) I couldn't resist a shot of "The Bankrupt Bookseller" (the orange jacketed book) and the troika of the Lone Ranger, Roger Maris and Hillary Clinton.

My fellow 2014 Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar buddy Charles Schmieg of Black Paw Books came to Fair. He ended up with an interesting inscribed chess book and since we were both still buzzing with book energy from our CABS experience, we talked about the book business and our plans for quite some time. Charles is the taller one.

Patricia McWilliams of Hermit Hill Books in Poultney, Vermont had a terrific display of fine bindings and interesting titles. Her shop is just across the New York border from Granville, the "Slate Capital of the World" and is worth a trip if you are in our neck of the woods. Patricia reported great sales this summer and let's hope the trend continues.  That's Patricia on the right mulling over her final display, with Lizz Young on the left. Lizz is a specialist bookseller who sells books about food, drink and the domestic arts, and her stylish display is shown below. She really utilizes height and unusual shelving accents to punch up her book displays and I will be trying to incorporate these aspects in my own configurations for future book fairs. Lizz also has one of the most interesting and erudite book blogs, so be sure to check that out.

On the subject of effective book fair displays, my book booth neighbor John Hess of Catamount Books in East Arlington, VT, has had great success with his self-constructed shelves that allow for the more attractive bindings and jacket art to be faced out. John reports that since he started using these shelves, he brings fewer boxes of books but sells more! Now that's something any bookseller's back and shoulders can appreciate. I forgot to capture an image of the shelves in all their book-loaded glory during the Fair (and you would have seen the spaces where books had been sold), but here's a fuzzy photo of them just before John packed them up.

New Hampshire bookseller Michael Daum was busy pricing up some of his stock when I strolled by his booth, so I didn't disturb him, but he is one of the most approachable bookseller colleagues I have met at the Vermont and Albany book fairs. Michael also has one of the best bookseller voices in the business: a rumbling, smoky-toned baritone with lots of New England Yankee inflections. And then there's his beautiful books...

My own book wares, a colorful mix of colorful older children's books, New England history, art, antiques and a few of my better books, were designed to appeal more to the walk-in crowd than my fellow book dealers. Unfortunately, the unzippering of the clouds with two months of long overdue rain timed to drench the world directly after the Brattleboro Fair opened took care of those crowds and the book fair attendance was quite thin. I still consider the Fair a success, because I did buy and sell from some of my colleagues, and I learned quite a bit from chatting with them and observing what kinds of books they brought, but here's hoping the Albany Antiquarian Book Fair on Sunday, October 19th at the Albany Institute of History and Art will be a less soggy af-FAIR.

Seen at the August 12, 2012 Brattleboro Book Fair

The Book Trout was on the road at the as a first time exhibitor at the Brattleboro Book Fair, the summer show for the Vermont Antiquarian Booksellers Association. I had previously had a good experience at the Spring Book Fair in Burlington, and since Brattleboro is even closer to home, it was easy to pack the old Chevy Blazer up with some folding shelves and boxes of books (this time only seven boxes, which seemed a little skimpy after setting up).

We set up on Saturday during extremely unsettled weather conditions. My hair-o-meter told me it would rain imminently and it did, very hard, on the last trip back out to the car, with all my windows and back hood up. The temperature wasn't too bad inside the venue, but you can see that all those damp booksellers and their soggy boxes raised the humidity to rain forest levels and when we came back the next day to start the show, lots of softcover and paper items were curled up or droopy, causing some rearrangement of book displays.

I brought my mom, Carol Marie Davis, a Vermont author, to help me out with my booth. She has written two books thus far, The Adventures of Moonspirit: A Girl from Florida's Past and Anna: Heart of a Peasant and is researching on a third book, tentatively to be about some handmade dolls that travel up the Underground Railroad during the Civil War era.

Mom seemed to enjoy minding our booth at the Book Fair. Unfortunately my free labor situation may be in jeopardy as I was ratted out by my colleague, Richard Mori, who informed her that I was not only supposed to pay her for helping me out, but I was to throw in a free lunch! I'll find a way to fix his wagon at the next book fair.

My tables adjoined a space with Mary Faneuil Hill of Old & New England Books, who had a lovely display of Tasha Tudor books and history volumes, spiced up with a couple of Punch and Judy puppets. Mary has a seasonal shop in Newfane (open May through October) and regaled us with stories about having Tasha Tudor come to her shop many times for signings and visits.

Mom really was excited to meet Donald H. Cresswell of The Philadelphia Print Shop, who appears often as an appraiser on the Antiques Road Show. He was very generous with his time with Mom and other fairgoers and she was thrilled to pose with him and an Audubon print of an osprey. Cresswell was one of several exhibitors who offered ten minute symposia throughout the Fair on various bookish topics such as prints, Theodore Roosevelt, and folk music. This continuing education idea is the brainchild of the gregarious Book Fair impresario Gary Austin of Austin's Antiquarian Books in Wilmington, VT.

(Intriguingly, right after the Fair I read The Island of Lost Maps, by Miles Harvey, which is all about the world of antique maps, and it turns out that Cresswell used to work for Graham Arader, who features prominently in the book. It's a fascinating read. And Mom recommended it to me, so you can see why I want to keep her on as an adjunct employee).


It was nice to see some familiar bookseller colleagues at the Fair. Donna Howard of The Eloquent Page in St. Albans, VT was there with an eye-catching booth, and I was pleased to see John and Carol Hess from Arlington, Vermont's Catamount Books. They are a delightful pair and I have to say that they won the Biblio-Synchronicity Award from my perspective with their side-by-side display of a copy of The Sucking Lice of North America next to a photo-essay entitled "Asses".

The most luscious eye-candy that I saw at the Fair was at the nearby display of Susan Krinsky, of Brandywine Antiques and Books of Amherst, New Hampshire. She had so many lovely antique children's books and other lovely titles, and I couldn't resist a few snaps.

That's Susan above proudly offering a first edition of Wanda Gag's wonderful book "Millions of Cats" and Robert Heinlein's "Red Planet".

All in all, a great day at the Brattleboro Book Fair. The venue was well-lit and there was plenty of space for the crowds and exhibitors to spread out. We sold some books (mostly Vermont history, vintage paperbacks and children's books), gawked at many others and had some illuminating conversations about authors, illustrators, book history and other bibliophilic topics, so I will be sure to be back next year.