 The More Things Change, the More They (May Not) Remain the Same The original quote popped into my head when I was gathering the information I needed to write about the Newberry Book Fair (below) that is due to start on Thursday. Even though I’ve never been I love this book fair because I love its blog. Uncle Blogsy, the writer of said blog, is funny, snarky, patient (mostly), and utterly delightful. He makes me want to go because he makes even the problems sound like fun. But while reading the latest posts, I was suddenly struck with this question: will the ever-increasing popularity of e-readers mean the end or at least the severe wounding of book fairs like this? Five years from now will this book fair be much less than it is? Ten years from now will they even exist? I hope not because used book fairs like these are more than just a fundraising technique for libraries or nonprofit organizations. They are unique book events in which greed, desperation, passion, fun, and utter, overwhelming exhaustion come together for a few days. It’s probably been ten years since I was a volunteer for our local Planned Parenthood book sale in late September. It is the largest used book sale in three counties, and offers thousands upon thousands of used books. People come from far away to attend this one, and going on opening night, on the first general day, or on the last (half price) day generally means you’d better be prepared with a little aggression and a lot of money. The volunteer part was fun. Except for the month after the book sale ended, it went on year round. Volunteers would meet on Saturdays, pile endless boxes and bags of books on tables in a small room, and sort the books into boxes labeled with category names. As a box would fill it would be taken away to the holding bins and be replaced with a new one. Books suspected of being valuable were held out to be checked later. To some degree, volunteers could buy books then, but certain popular categories were off limits until the sale. You got filthy doing this. Aside from the usual dust and dirt that books naturally accumulate (and spread when disturbed), there would occasionally be roaches, mice droppings, and other unpleasant surprises. Plus, the rental rooms never had air conditioning, and were often themselves dirty and dusty. (Someone, it seemed, always had to clean the bathroom before it could be used.) There was also the useless clutter. Couldn’t sell those decades’ worth of National Geographics? Dump ‘em here. Old textbooks lying around? Sure, why not—even though we always had a big, eminently readable signs outside indicating that we did not take, and please do not leave, magazines or textbooks. After months of sorting and boxing the search for a selling site would take place. One year I was in charge of this. What we wanted was amazing, most of all because we wanted was something free or at a very low price on State Street in the midst of the busiest part of downtown. Surprisingly, we often got it. I was thrilled, when it was my year, to come up with an astonishingly large and comfortable and clean place across the street from a theatre, and surrounded by several popular retail establishments. It did come, to everyone’s surprise, with a homeless guy who had, apparently for months, been living comfortably in the basement (with access to good bathrooms); I am thankful I was not the one who found him in that dark space. I think I would have lost my heart if I had. One thing that was constant, aside from the eBay dealers who rode roughshod over everyone the first night, was the picketers. After so many years, we came to view them almost as friends. Few returned our waves, but there was the year one mother, after her picket line shift was over, entered the store and bought a good number of books for her young daughter. Aside from the stressful search for an appropriate site that was available when we needed it, there was the difficulty of getting tables. These heavy wooden monstrosities had to be picked up, set up, and afterwards returned. But young male muscle power was something that also had to be found, and wasn’t always easy to find. So several years ago Planned Parenthood made the decision to move the sale to our Showgrounds, where several halls, stalls, and other gathering places that hosted horse shows, postcard shows, antique shows, the country fair, and all other manner of fun appeared. I missed a few years after I stopped volunteering. But I attended in 2009 and 2010, and my wallet knew it. Last year, I had determined not to go, not because I didn’t want to but because I knew how likely it was that I would come home a lot poorer than I wanted. The hall is large and well laid out. Tables are sufficiently separated so that people can be back-to-back at two adjacent ones, yet there is still plenty of room for people to get by between them. Volunteers wander around with boxes and bags, and will often help you take your filled bags over to the side so you can continue browsing. This makes for dangerous buying behavior. Two days into last year’s sale I was driving home from work. It had been a very rough day, and I was sagging over the wheel of the car when I saw the huge sign for the sale. “I’ll just look,” I told myself, “it will be fun.” It was fun. It also turned out to be expensive. Several hours and nearly hundred dollars later, I emerged in a much better frame of mind, exhausted but joyful. Poorer too. Even though I had jettisoned about thirty books before I checked out, I still ended up with lots of books. History, biography, memoirs, cookbooks, literature, travel, gardening, art. And to get back to the original question that started me off on this tangent, I really do wonder how the explosive growth of e-books is going to affect this sale and others. Will the donations slow? Will buyers fall off? Will one of my favorite ways to buy books become a thing of the past? I hope not. I hope that books that are not rare or valuable continue to be cherished by readers. I hope that there will be used book fairs, that heavy wooden tables will continue to groan under their burdens, that eBay sellers will continue to haunt the sales in hopes of finding that one gem marked at $5, and most of all, I hope that the more things change the more they will remain the same. Special Note: A friend, someone essential to the book publishing business and personally precious to me, lost her mom to colon cancer last week. Her mom had been suffering with it for fifteen years, and my friend is convinced that if her mom had received regular colonoscopies (and treatment) this terrible disease might not have killed her. Please, BiblioBuffet readers, as unpleasant as the pre-procedure may be, as embarrassing as the procedure may be, don’t skip it. Make an appointment now. Please. Because the alternative is far, far worse. Upcoming Book Festivals and Fairs: Location: Chicago, Illinois Location: Columbus, Ohio The Pub House: The Body: An Essay by Jenny Boully explores loss, absence and disappearance in the form of footnotes to a non-existent text. It’s termed a “guarded narrative” and transcends the usual ideas of plot, genre, form, and more. Griffin by Albert Goldbarth combines two essays in a “hybrid essay variety,” in which the author uses his friends’ experiences—the dissolution of a marriage and another’s struggle with cancer—to explore the “amalgam of spirit and physical body.” Imaging Books & Reading: Of Interest: Until next week, read well, read often and read on!
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