Day Two and wrap up of NJ 2008

Just a quick update as I need to get on the road pretty soon and head north. After a very rainy, icy and generally slow start, day two started with a blue sky and about twice as warm. While it remained somewhat slow, overall it was a pretty good show.

As a general rule, a great show is one where you have strong sales *and* good buying opportunities. An icky show is one where sales are soft and there is nothing to to buy. Good shows can cut either way, good sales but nothing to buy or soft sales but good buying. This show fell into the "soft sales but good buying" category.

I did have one sale that made me extremely happy. A very young lady (12ish) and her mom were spending a fair bit of time looking at two different unusual Bemelmans' titles. I asked if I could be of assistance, assuming it was the mom that was interested, only to learn that it was the young lady who was very interested in Bemelmans, having started with Madeline and moved on. We had a very nice conversation about him (and Thurber and White). She pretty much made my day.

The buying at the fair was pretty great. I picked up a wonderful Witken volume inscribed by the artist to another (lesser known) photographer. I picked up a nice copy of Corso's, Bomb that should be fun to have in SF (the poem itself is in the shape of a mushroom cloud; the work is second, arguably, only to Howl as to defining the core of the Beat voice). I found a Lowenfels volume with an exceptional Rockwell Kent DJ that I have never seen before and a smattering of other fun things. I'll probably post on one or two of them shortly. We shall see.

Two images: the first is most of the booth and my mother's decapitated head (as a general rule, it is not nice to decapitate one's mother, but every now and then it can't be helped). The other is the *real* reason my mother wanted to come...my slightly over 1 year old nephew, Oliver. It was his first book fair and he was very excited.