Newberry Library Book Fair

Gee, I was pretty harsh in my review of this book fair six years ago, but my experience this year was vastly superior to 2008.
Either the book sale itself has substantively improved, or going on Friday instead of Sunday makes that much difference – or perhaps both. In any case, I did indeed attend on Friday and found it to be time very well spent.
Low-​class? Nay, most everyone was satisfactorily well behaved and the Newberry people ran a tidy and efficient operation.
Books in poor to fair condition? Nay, fair to very good.
Nothing that I have heard of, let alone want to take home? Nay, I spent 90 minutes browsing all the rooms and had to make some really tough choices due to my volume and weight constraints (travelling by foot and CTA).
The history, biography, and literary criticism sections comprised particularly rich veins; among other titles, I scooped up a little-​used paperback of Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton for only four bucks. There was also a stupendous array of dictionaries. I once read a book about a guy who collected hundreds of dictionaries, and now that I saw nearly that many lined up like wise and pretty maids all in a row, I suddenly understood. I coveted.
And the treasures, oh the serendipitous treasures. I spent most of this spring scouring local used bookstores for a single-​volume edition of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos. I finally gave up and checked out the individual volumes from the library. Well lo and behold, here at the book fair I found a1937 Modern Library publication of the collected triology, in quite good condition for its age, for only TWO DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS. !!!
Ditto Nancy Mitford’s The Sun King: in the tenth or eleventh store of my search a while back, I finally found the paperback NYRB version (text only) for $ 5.99 and counted myself lucky (and desperate). Here I found the original 1966 hardback, containing several dozen color photos and illustrations, for FOUR DOLLARS. !! That kind of luck can hardly be relied upon even once per year, but twice in the same event? Brilliant!
It wasn’t terribly crowded, but of course sharing the space with a couple hundred other bibliophiles is one of the tradeoffs of a large sale like this. The upside of being forced to suppress my highly sensitive personal-​space proximity alarms is that the assemblage of eccentrics, odd ducks, and downright weirdos makes for outstanding people-​watching.
My only specific criticism is that they need better light in the big room (history, biography, literature, etc). Both my back and my eyes are too old for the stooping and peering required to peruse the titles on even half the spines, let alone all of them. Who knows, I may have bought more if I could have seen better…
So there you have it: go on Friday if you can; I can’t vouch for Saturday and Sunday. But on Friday this book fair is truly deserving of its venue.