Newberry Library Sale

If I can sneak out of the office a bit early. I also plan on going on Sunday.

Is that Thursday? Or is there a pre-Thursday preview?

There's a Wednesday night preview for Associates at the Author level and higher, and for President's Fellows.

Ah, thanks. Guess I will just have to wait until Thursday with the riff-raff.

I actually haven't decided for sure on a day—weren't we talking about an LT meetup at one point?

We were.

My usual plan of attack is to go to the preview, and then return on Sunday, when everything left over (and there's usually a lot left over!) is half-price.

So I'd be happy to meetup with anyone sometime on Sunday, after we've exhausted ourselves and our wallets. ;-)

So Sunday for a meet up then? Is there a preferred time and location? It feels rather like a 1930's movie doesn't it?

> 7

Sounds like a plan! There's a little sandwich/coffee place at the NW corner of Clark and whatever the street is just north of Walton. Would that work? Any other suggestions?

When do folks think they'll be ready for some nourishment?

That would be Oak St.

Awwww, I would totally come but I'll be out of town on Sunday! Wishing you all wonderful and serendipitous findings of great deals on books! :)

(Anyone else trying to swing going to work late tomorrow to hit the noon opening??)

Oh el, I am sorry to miss you. I would think about skipping work but I will be taking time off next week to move my apartment.

(Why on earth am I willing to look at more books when I am in the process of moving the ones I have down three flights of stairs and up two?)

I could swing any time in there. Anyone know the name of the coffee shop?

Any afternoon-time should be cool with me. I think I'm going to be going on Thursday afternoon and Sunday so I won't be rushing out of the house early Sunday morning or anything.

> 11

It's the BomBon Americano.

May I suggest 3:00 on Sunday? Does that work for people? My time's flexible if it doesn't.

Sounds excellent to me.

That seems fine.

Sounds good to me ... I hardly have an excuse, living a scant 3 blocks from Newberry Library!

The only reason that 3:00 wouldn't work would be that my family has hijacked me off to see a movie or something, but I can "put a request in" for the timeslot, and I might even get to drag them along.

 

ONE POTENTIAL PROBLEM !!!

According to the web site that Lilithcat has a link to in #13 above, "BomBon Americano" isn't open on Sundays!

There are, of course, Starbucks locations nearby ... one at State & Delaware (2.5 blocks), one on Rush north of Walton (3 blocks), and one at State & Pearson (4.5 blocks). There is Dave & Busters on Clark north of Oak (2 blocks), and, of course, a lot of other bars/restaurants within 3-4 blocks.

 

Oh, no! I, of course, didn't bother to look at the website. Bad me.

Which of those other options would you suggest, BTRIPP?

Oh, I should mention that I'm just back from Preview Night, and I did leave some books for you all, and my credit card did not melt.

(Oh, and having your LibraryThing catalogue does not prevent you buying duplicates when the #%*@#* publishers use different titles! Grrrrrrr!)

Re. #18: "Which of those other options would you suggest, BTRIPP? "

Well, it depends on what "atmosphere" folks want.

Dave & Busters would involve meeting in their bar, which also serves food. I suggested it because it is probably the next closest thing.

The Starbucks are, well, all Starbucks. The one closest (at State & Delaware) is probably the "easiest going" of them, and has a strange lay-out (with a long strip of window counter seating along the State St. side) that might provide us with an area to congregate.

 

Have we a consensus?

Here are the nearest places:



 

Whatever is easiest is fine with me. As long as I know where I am going I'll be there.

I like the map.

I vote for close.

Dave & Buster's at 3:00?

That works for me. But it probably means I won't be bringing the kids ... if I get them anywhere near the "midway", we'll spend all my "book money" on games!

 

Dave and Buster's it is. See you guys at 3:00.

I guess I was "unclear on the concept" ...

We are meeting there after we've all individually gone to the book fair?

I was under the impression that we were assembling at a location and then descending on the Newberry Library like a cloud of literature-crazed locusts!

This (in the words of one of my darling daughters) "changes everything", and I will be able to bring The Girls, and set them loose on the Midway without fear of missing the book shopping!

See y'all at 3:00 then ...

 

Nice to meet you all today. Dave and Buster's has no doubt never had that much talk about books!

It was delightful! We should do this more often (both meeting up and buying books).

I've been madly cataloguing everything I bought today. Between today and preview night, I bought 45 books (not counting at least a half-dozen that I bought for other people)!

Well, this was at the top of the discussion topic list for this group, and so I figured I'd just revive the thread!

Is anyone going to the Newberry's book sale this year? I'll be volunteering from 10-2 on Saturday, and plan to do all my shopping after that. I am not sure what room I'll be in, or if I'll be a floater. I'm really looking forward to it!

I'll be there on Sunday. I usually go to the Members' Preview, but have a conflict that evening.

Any interest in trying to get together again on Sunday?

Hopefully this time I won't look like death warmed over (last year I was in the hospital 2 days later with "massive, multiple, bilateral" Pulmonary Embolisms)!

 

> 33

Yes, I would. I enjoyed meeting everyone last year, and would love to do it again.

Same here.

And wow, BTRIPP, glad you're okay!

I think I'll be doing my shopping on Saturday, after volunteering, but if anyone stops by that day, look out for me :-) I'll be the petite Indian girl.

I could possibly stop by earlier on Saturday or on Sunday. II'll plan to check in and see if there is a group meet up again on Sunday but I have to be to the theater by 6:00.

If I am there Saturday I'll look for you aarti.

I have been resisting the lure of Powell's but I have a feeling I'll end up down there some lunch time this week.

i thought the sale was last week and showed up at the newberry library on friday. i had even visited their website to check the hours. hehehe

i am not absent minded, i am ahead of my times!

Once again, I'm likely to only get over there on Sunday.

 

Same here, Sunday only.

I already missed preview night but it looks like I will stop by tonight afterwork -my schedule this weekend is a mess. If anyone is around I have blonde wavy hair and a grey/green sweater on today if anyone is there and wants to say hi.

So, back to a previous question.

Anyone up for getting together Sunday afternoon, after we've exhausted the sale?

I'd be up for a Sunday get-together ... although I'm not sure when we're getting to the sale ... we have go see that Guinea Pig movie first.

By the way ... have a blog post up from my (inadvertent) visit to the Bughouse Square Debates ... HERE.

 

I don't know why it is, but I always miss the Bughouse Square Debates. It seems as though I always have something else going on.

Are folks getting together?

The Girls and I have been over to Newberry and back and I'm open for meeting up with anybody ... just let me know!

 

Did anyone get any good books? I found a couple of virago modern classics and two beautiful old guide books and some postcards of yellowstone and a map of Finland and a couple of great children's books. It seemed like there were not as many books this year.

> 49

I went on Sunday (I was there when it opened) and I definitely thought there was less this year than in the past. I "only" bought 27 books (25 for myself, which are catalogued, and two that I'm planning to give away).

I was excited to find Disbound and Dispersed: The Leaf Book Considered, which is the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Newberry a few years ago. I couldn't afford it then, but on half-price day, I could.

I also found a very funny collection, Parodies on Walt Whitman, which is exactly what the name says. And there was a nice William Morris Society edition of Morris' previously unpublished translation of The Story of Kormak (an Icelanding saga), including plates of his manuscript. It's a quarter-leather binding, and smells lovely.

I didn't find many books this time, either. I volunteered Saturday in the History/Religion/Other Miscellaneous room (Room 6), and all the books I picked up were from there, possibly because I had four hours to browse. All of them are history books relating to the 17th-19th centuries in England and France.

I went on Friday, and I've never been before. I have to say I was a little disappointed, too, but I can't really say what I was expecting.

The Drama section was a little weak--it pretty much only had Shakespeare. History was okay, although I could find very little on contemporary American history, which surprised me.

I think I was happiest with the Foreign Language section--got some lovely French language books!

Oh, and I did find my "white whale", The Roosevelt I Knew! Granted, it's in terrible condition and the dust jacket is almost completely disintegrated, but it's mine now!

So the question comes up ... what did you get? Not much, actually, got a few books for each of my daughters, and got three for me:

Civilizations of the Indus Valley and Beyond by Mortimer Wheeler

The Riddle of the Pyramids by Kurt Mendelssohn

Beyond Ego: Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology by Roger N. Walsh and Frances Vaughan

By Sunday afternoon, things were pretty picked over ... and I was not "splurging" (otherwise I would have paid $20 for a real nice etching, which was gone when I got back to the print room), so I only grabbed stuff that I was pretty sure that I was going to want to read sometime in this decade.

One cool thing about the Wheeler book ... it has an "ex libris" stamp in it from Abbas Alizadeh who is a researcher down at The Oriental Institute ... from their web site he seems to be still extant (my assumption on most of the books at the Newberry Book Fair is that they're from the recently deceased), which surprised me. Must have been cleaning off a book shelf or something (and speaking of "cleaning" I've never seen a book with more fingerprints and dripped stuff on its pages that you could still reasonably read!). I was tempted to send an e-mail asking how his book ended up in my collection, but I figured that would be "unwelcome".

By the way ... L.T.'s "will you like it" function tells me I'm going to love all three of these!

 

I went but was creeped out by the crazies in the park

I wanted to be one of the crazies in the park, but I was busy.

It's time again.

As usual, I'll probably show up on Sunday (with my kids) for 1/2-price day!

 

Ah, another year, another run through the Newberry Library Book Fair.

One of these years, I'll have to go before Sunday afternoon ... although the picked-over condition does help limit my purchases (but The Girls get frustrated as there's almost nothing good left in the Children's section by then).

Did anybody else notice how many popular VHS tapes there were this year? It's like a whole bunch of people decided they were going to dump their video tape collections ... my girls picked up two Batman movies and Silence of the Lambs today. I suppose it's easy enough to copy those to one's own DVDs these days ... I know that The Wife would love to dump the bazillion VHS tapes (primarily intended for little kids) that we have here!

Between us we got five books, three videos, and one computer game (Scrabble ... I'm hoping I can get the W95 disk to run on Wxp), for a whopping total of $12. Again, I was tempted by some of the art, but not as seriously tempted as I was last year (and somebody had solved that by grabbing them before I got back from the Archaeology section).

It would be fun to have another get-together of LT folks one of these years during the fair!

 

i usually walk around all the rooms but my priority is the art section. i don't know of any other place where you can find so many art books at such low price anywhere in the city. after that i look for the poetry section and the foreign language section. i'm kind of glad i only went on the last day, otherwise i would've spent too much. this year's loot: three huge art books (ensor, indian painting, clemente) and three poetry anthologies (amichai, aleixandre, gil de biedma).

27 books today, two of which accounted for more than 50% of what I spent! Mostly art books, some memoirs, a bit of literature and travel.

How the HECK did I miss the factoid that this weekend was the Newberry Library Book Fair???

I had ZERO data on it ... it took my 11-year-old asking me if we were going tomorrow to let me know it was happening ... WTF?

I did, however, make it down to the Printers Ball last night ... anybody else there?

I was at the Printers Ball! Such fun!

I also went to the Newberry yesterday. I wasn't going to. I swore I'd only go one day, Sunday. But I was on the north side, and, as I was headed home, somehow, my car just got off the Drive at North Avenue all by itself! I swear! And then there was a parking space right there on Clark Street across from the Newberry. So what choice did I have?

I had "three dates" with me, both my daughters and one of their BFFs ... the elder two all dressed up (if you saw an oriental "Southern Belle" in the company of a blondish "Greek Priestess" that was them). What an awesome event ... I wandered out of there with at least a dozen books, a poster, 30' of wrapping paper, frameable art, magazines, etc. And, were I still a drinking man, I could have had all the FREE BEER I could handle. Frankly, I'm surprised there weren't more people there simply for the free beer!

 

OK ... this was probably the most picked-over I've seen the Newberry Sale on half-price Sunday ... a friend who works the sale says they had much more traffic than they've had any time recently (probably due to not having any day-time thunderstorms this year).

Anyway, between me and The Girls we had about 20 items ... they each got some videos, I just got books. I got one dupe (I got Idries Shah's "Learning How To Learn", which I already had, what I needed was "Knowing how to Know") which I passed on to Daughter #1.

So, I ended up with just four books:

          Lewis Spence's "An Encyclopeadia of Occultism"
          H. Byron Earhart's "Japanese Religion: Unity and Diversity"
          Juan Mascaro's "The Dhammapada"
          Phra Acariya Thoon Khippapanno's "Beyond the Stream of the World"

         

Hi! I joined Librarything awhile ago but I have never made a comment in a chat room. I'm so glad there's a Chicago group and I was reminded of the Newberry book sale. I was able to go yesterday and got a few good books but never enough to settle my addiction.

Wow ... I'm amazed to find that Lewis Spence's "An Encyclopeadia of Occultism" is still in print ... it initially came out in 1920, and the copy I got at the Newberry sale was a fancy 1959 edition of a hardcover in a slipcase ... I also see that most of it's available in a Google e-book!

 

The selection of art books and foreign books wasn't that great this year. I did however get Philip Larkin: Collected Poems for $3 brand new. A book that I actually was thinking about buying.

I was really bad. Let's just say I bought more than enough on Sunday to get a copy of Great Chicago Stories.

Among my finds was the catalog from the Sotheby's sale of the Magna Carta in 2007. It's a hardcover, gorgeously illustrated, with historical essays. The Magna Carta was sold for $21.3 million. I got the catalog for $2.50.

Mark your calendars for the last weekend of July for the annual Newberry Sale--read all about it on the Blog: http://www.newberry.org/book-fair-blog

Oh, that's been on my calendar, and the post card stuck on my fridge, for weeks. I really shouldn't, but of course I say that every year, and come back with piles.

Can't believe it, but it's been a whole year, and now time for another Newberry Sale this weekend...

Yep. I went to the Preview Night tonight and did significant damage.

But, man, I really wish they would do something to rein in the dealers.

I find that the art section is always the most intense. The space is very narrow, the books very big. This year they had some nice stuff. I did most of my damage in the poetry section though. I shall return on Sunday.

>72 lilithcat: I've never gone to Preview Night...is it more crowded than Sunday?