Books!

What do you do when you've just completed a major holiday, you're waiting to hear what, if anything, your husband can eat *and* a country you hold very close to your heart is in a constant and bloody state of war?

You oversleep that day's rally at the UN and instead take a subway and a train to an antiquarian book fair and forget *all* of that. And that is, indeed, what we did. I bought three bagel sandwiches, picked my husband up after his Sunday morning class and we went to Garden City, Long Island. The trip was pleasant by itself - Jonathan the train buff loved looking out the train windows all the way there.

The fair was not as crowded as it could be - the dealers seemed to outnumber the customers - but that didn't matter. The booths were full of books - modern first editions and antiques, books with dust jackets, books with elegant bindings and books with neither, and in all categories. Just the selection is overwhelming. I love book fairs.

I came in with three categories in mind - children's books, cookbooks and etiquette books. A children's cookery and etiquette book dating from 1880 to 1930 would be ideal. I love children's cookbooks from that time period.

I didn't find any children's books this time, but I did come back with a bunch of cookbooks and one satire on etiquette books, plus some commercial advertising pamphlets - including the Gold Medal Flour one - and a book on advertising which I got at a discount. All under $100, too.
This is excellent. Last year, I came back with a *single* children's cookbook for $125, *but* that was a good price for the book and I'd been searching for it for a year, since I'd passed it up the year before, so it was all worth it.

All in all, very, very good.