The Joy of the Book Fair.

by Dick Loftin.

There are few things I enjoy more than the book fair. One of the best is the Holland Hall Book Fair, held every year on the last Saturday of February. I make my annual pilgrimage to jostle among the equally excited book lovers and buyers, buying not just one or two books, but bags of books. It is just too easy. The books are moderately priced, few are more than five dollars, so if I come up on something that looks the least bit interesting–Six Existentialist Thinkers, by H.J. Blackman [1952], for instance and for only a dollar–it goes right in my bag without a second thought. I may have set a record this year with 20 books purchased. Last year, I found Stephen Kings On Writing, in paperback for a couple of dollars. This year I found it in hardcover [always my preference] for three dollars. “Score!” I said to myself.

The beauty of the book fair is the unexpected–the books I have been looking for–to fill out my collection. There were two written by Robert F. Kennedy (To Seek A Newer World, [1967] and The Enemy Within, [1960]) and volumes of poetry by Ogden Nash and John Beecher. I had heard of Nash, of course, but Beecher was new to me. I put both volumes in my bag right away. So many of these books are long out of print and to find them at all–never mind in hardcover!–is a book lovers delight.

There is a personal, emotional aspect to the book fair. These books once belonged to someone. Poetry, essays, fiction, history, biography, every genre. They were in their personal library. They mattered. They were purchased years, decades ago, and they were loved. They were a part of their lives and now, most likely after they have passed on, are resting at a book fair in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But things are always better when they are handed down, and I know in buying these books they pass from one book lover’s hand to mine. And I will love them as much as they did. That, I promise to their former owners. Sometimes, the books will be inscribed, or notes will be left in the margins or somewhere else in the pages. I can’t bear to write on the pages of books myself, after years of reprimanding by my school teachers, but I enjoy discovering this marginalia in the books I buy. In the book of poems by Nash, on the inside was written, “From Amy, Mother’s Day, 1978.” Mother probably cherished the book from the moment it was given to her, and up to, most likely, the day she passed on. The book could have very well been discovered again by Amy while going through her mother’s things. She probably had a tearful moment. Or two.

After I bring them home, my wife amused by the great piles on the coffee table in the living room, I go through each one looking for something about them, a scrap of paper, a receipt, a book marker. I’ll reflect on the past owners of these books and appreciate that they are mine now.

This explains why I love books so much. They are so descriptive of our times, our tastes, the things we believe, the stories we enjoy, the life we have lived or wished to have lived. They are very much who we are.

So maybe the act of discarding the long held books of someone after they have loved them for so many years, in a noble, respected place like the book fair, sending them into the hands and lives of someone else who will love them just as much, and perhaps hand them down again one day, is a good thing. There were a lot of filled up bags at the Holland Hall Book Fair–and that is something to celebrate.

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Source Material:

Learn more about Holland Hall School and the Holland Hall Book Fair, Here.

Tulsa World article on the Holland Hall Book Fair, Here.

Photo of the Holland Hall Book Fair on February 23, 2013 by Endpaper Review.