Hit that Book Fair at the Institute Library yesterday. The place is officially titled the Young Men’s Institute Library, though the current membership conclusively demonstrates that you needn’t be a man, or at all young, to join. Yesterday, though, the Institute’s 20something-old executive director Will Baker joshed that “If you leave, Chris, I’ll be the oldest one here.
It was a change of scenery in other ways as well. All the bookcases and tables at the front end of the library had been cleared so they could become the sale area. The rarely open third floor had tables full of books as well. The main stacks were closed off for the day, another rarity.
Some genuine effort had gone into what I hope will be a new tradition at the YMIL. Serious bookpersons were involved, so the sale books had been individually (and fairly) priced, rather than the sort of general pricing ($3 per hardcover, $1 paperback) that so many similar events go for these days. (I always felt that such generalizing could hurt the feelings of the books, which deserved to be appreciated singly.)
Here’s what I came away with, for seven dollars total:
• Word of Mouth, a novel by Jerome Weidman. (Stay tuned for an item on this over at the sister blog, New Haven Theater Jerk.)
• Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household. A 1960 novel which has some of the same themes of loving, hunting and avenging as Household’s classics Rogue Male and A Rough Shoot. I already have Watcher in the Shadows in paperback, but this is the gorgeous hardcover with Milton Glaser’s grassy cover design.
• The Burlesque Tradition in the English Theatre after 1660 by V.C. Clinton-Baddeley.
• Mountain Meadow by John Buchan. You’d suspect I was working a countryside suspense theme, with Household and Buchan in the same batch of books. This isn’t one of Buchan’s Richard Hannay books, but it is one of his Greenmantle and Huntingtower thrillers.
• A Magic School Bus book for Sally (but don’t tell her; it’ll come from the Tooth Fairy).
• plus this:
Not the flashiest book haul ever, granted, but I came late to the party, a couple of hours before the sale ended. Plus I’m in a frugal phase.
I was pleased to see that the sale organizers hadn’t raided the hallowed stacks of the YMIL itself for the event. There were some library items, Taxi among them, but mostly these donated volumes—recent bestsellers, art and poetry tomes, even textbooks and (something this library’s not known for) children’s books.
What I’ll remember, though, is the library not looking like it always does. Here’s to more transformations.
