Certainly a confluence of stuff for Mr. UBU. First of all there’s the resumption of the Ann Arbor Public Library book sale. I love the darn thing, and it’s certainly a main source of books for my store and a serendipitous headwater of my meandering thought stream. Because I’ve been at this racket for a while now and they had abbreviated sales this summer, I’m not as wigged out about it as I used to be, but it’s still as pretty close to excited as this jaded old book dealer gets. The drill for the preview which is on a Thursday night is that you join the Friends of the Library (don’t tell my penny pinching peers, but I actually get the membership level above the minimum out of sheer love for the sale) and then you come in when the library opens in the morning and get a line number for the event that night, to spare the library from having a bunch of scruffy misfits waiting in line all day. God knows how long some of them had been hanging out when I got there – to me it’s a waste of time to wait in a line for an hour to gain a forty second jump on everybody else. I try to saunter in just at nine, but usually, like at rock shows. my anticipation gets the better of me and I get there early, in the case only by five minutes, at which point there were two groups, the book dealers and the derelicts waiting to get it. You could tell the difference only because the dealers were more or less in a line. When I got there the distaff half of a creepy book scout couple known as "the machine" handed me a number – this also doesn’t incite me the way it used to, but the fact is that these numbers aren’t issued by the friends of the library at all, and are back by the authority of only this couple themselves, and, frankly, they are not the boss of me. Everyone knows that UBU is a stickler for fair play, and I don’t need them presuming to make sure I know my place. They’d even printed up tidy little numbered slips on their computer with the words Ann Arbor Library Preview Night 2009 on them, proving only that there are certainly people who take the whole thing a lot more seriously than I do. The dealer behind me, a guy I’m slowly starting to like despite his being a jerk who once tried to run me over, earned a little more love by coming even later than me and refusing to take a number at all. Soon enough the doors opened, and we were the tail end except for one old lady who finally asked what the line was for. The dealer explained, and the lady went oh, I thought everybody had to do this to get into the library. That settled she walked past us and I finally got my number, 23 in fact which isn’t quite the lowest I’ve ever had, but close. It also was higher than the 21 which the machine had given me, but no matter.
They kept on handing out numbers for an hour after the library opened and then for another hour before the sale started at six, so by then the number of the numbered had swelled about fifty. Since the order of entry has already been decided, there’s no reason to get there too early, but most people do, for the pleasure of waiting on the steps with their peers I guess. I was pretty much the last to arrive of the people who’d been there when the doors opened, but still had to partake of almost ten minutes of idle chatter. Then the doors open and they call out each number, and yes, after all this time the heart still pounds.
A fairly recent wrinkle in the preview night is that buyers are restricted to twenty books, to foil those evil out of town book dealers I hear. Two years ago under the benevolent Diane, the smaller mass market books, my bread and butter, weren’t included in that number, but last year under the less benevolent Jan they were. Neither of them are at the helm anymore (as far as I can tell nobody really is) so precedent remains in place. When I will chatting with my cashier friend Richard, the U of M football fanatic, I discovered that neither he nor any of his cashier pals were aware of the restriction, and I only wish I’d left with bags full before they were informed of it. But then I’m too honest for that (pause for tumultuous laughter).
But holding the purchase to twenty makes for some hard decisions unrelated to economy, kind of like roster cut day in the NFL. The late Ellis Peters is a very popular pioneering historical author, creator of the Brother Cadfael series of PBS fame, and someone who it seemed like I had a lifetime supply of their books, until one day I looked up and the well was dry. Most of the titles are out of print and some of them are going for big bucks on the net, so I scooped up the ten or so mint paperbacks that were there and then some other sure sells like Lee Child and Donna Leon. The literature section hadn’t seen much fresh entries since the summer sales so I kept searching for it, the book for me, the one mystically meant to fire my imagination and lead me down new paths of knowledge. I couldn’t find it, so I went into the area little traveled by UBU, the specially priced room. A confirmed bottom feeder, I don’t like to pay more that, say three bucks for a book, but sometimes there are good art books, etc., in there that make me go wild, plus specially priced books don’t count toward the twenty total. What I found was this:
Four CD’s and a booklet for $15. I hesitated, but finally plunked down my personal UBU dollars. I wasn’t really sure about it until I looked at it, and it’s a very neat collection of hard to find material – that and the fact that the going ebay cost for the set is $200. Suddenly it seemed a lot better.
This morning was the American Association of University Women sale at 8 am, a massive sale with equally massive prices. I won’t go into the details of that, but it went pretty much as expected, my UBU find being The Heptameron by Marguerite of Navarre Translated From the French privately printed in London, which is, I suppose, code for racy stuff. I paid five bucks for it, when there was no real need for it to be specially priced, but it does look pretty cool.
There often has been the confluence of library sale, AAUW sale and Bookfest, but never, dear reader, has there also been the kick off of the pro football regular season taking place at Heinz field and featuring my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers in the middle of it all, meaning I had to stay up late to watch, with overtime even. I know this a passion that many of my alternative followers do not understand, but, believe me, it is a passion real enough. The Steelers never make it easy for their followers who have them in their hearts, stressing said hearts with slow starts, sudden reversals and nail biting comebacks. Despite all the usual problems, no running game, questionable offensive line play, etc. they managed to do the most important thing, win, baby, win. The NFL supplied hoopla was pretty neat too, seeing Point State Park a field of black and gold, fireworks shooting off the tops of the downtown buildings and the usual breathtaking bridge vistas, but, gad, are The Black Eyed Peas always so lame? And that guy in the black cowboy hat – doesn’t he know it’s a hard hat city? Go back to Nashville, you tiny Titans.
The library sale reopens to the genial, general pubic public tomorrow morning, with no limit, so that’ll be another crazy scene. Then there’s the party at our house that the BookFest authors and presenters will come to – including OMG! The NPR luminaries Jane and Michael Sterns and the mostest bestest selling author I’ll probably ever meet, Jeffery Deaver, whose books I’ve been devouring, and then on Sunday….Oh, Yeah! The 7th annual Kerrytown Bookfest. Whew.
Wow, too much information, huh? Who knew that the life of a small time book dealer was so dull? So, I won’t tell you I also did two bad things today, one accidentally and one on purpose, and it looks like I’m going to get away with both of them, but, like I said, we won’t go into that, heh-heh, but just remember that the next time I get all holier that thou.)
YR PAL,
UBU
