Our Thankful Sale: Leatherbound volumes

Sarah knows exactly what would make the perfect Christmas gift for your book lover. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

Our Thankful Sale – In a customer's words

After Allan Roit and his friend read Our Thankful Sale post card when we posted in on Facebook, they had to come down to check out our sale. Can't blame them. After all, everything under $100 is 50% off and everything over $100 is 20% off. That includes books, maps, and prints. So we asked Allan if he'd like to make a video about our sale. He did it right on the spot. No script. No rehearsal. Just spoken from the heart. Thanks, Allan! We appreciate it. 

Our Rare Book Cafe: aviation and old maps

We got a laugh as we showed an 1830s map of Florida showing Mosquito County.

We had a grand time on Rare Book Cafe, the new Internet program devoted to antiquarian books. We were on Wednesday afternoon with our friends Steven Eisenstein and Thorne  Donnelley, who serve as co-hosts for the program, which is sponsored by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair.

Steven is the owner of A-Book-A-Brac Shop in Miami Beach and Thorne owns Liberty Books in West Palm Beach. Both are exhibitors each year at the Florida Antiqurian Book Fair, and both generously volunteer their time to make Rare Book Cafe happen twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We appreciate that.

The program, which you can watch if you follow this link, give us an opportunity to show some of the amazing items in a huge collection of aviation books we acquired awhile back. There are some truly outstanding pieces in the collection that will be of tremendous interest to fans of anything having to do with flying. Among the items we showed was a 1909 airplane catalog offering all the parts you would have needed to put together your very own flying machine. You could order the fabric, guy wires, and everything else needed for your Wright Brothers plane or several other makes.

There also was an instruction pamphlet for aerial combat during World War I. Pilots were instructed to tie themselves into their cockpits to afford them more confidence in looping aerial maneuvers, especially if the trick didn't result in vanquishing the enemy. At the top of each page, presumably to keep the objective squarely in front of each trainee, are the words TAKE DOWN THE HUN.

We mentioned some other items in the aviation collection but there are far too many to cover in one sitting. Maybe we'll have to revisit the subject later.

Another item we were pleased to share was a vintage Florida map that just came in. It's an extraordinary piece from the 1830s with which we should spend some more time. Everybody got a kick out of the designation of Mosquito County, which took up a big chunk of what is now Orange, Seminole, Osceola and some other counties in the Central Florida area. The area of the Keys, Miami, the Everglades, and point north were all part of Monroe County back then. Steven noted that there was no Miami Beach (where he lives) in those days.

Steven and Thorne shared stories, anecdotes, and items of interest as did Edie Eisenstein, Steven's wife, who has a large collection of miniature books.

Thank you to everyone for sharing your time, talent, and stories, and thank you for inviting us to participate. We'll see you again on Rare Book Cafe.

We're on Rare Book Cafe today! Join us!

We're  on Rare Book Cafe today and we'll be sharing a look at some of our recently acquired collection of aviation books. We hope you can join us.

Rare Book Cafe is a new live streaming program accessible on the Internet at Blab.im. You sign in with your Twitter account, then search for Rare Book Cafe under Scheduled programming. Use a Chrome or Firefox browser. It won't work on other browsers yet. If you'd rather just watch instead of participating, you can see it live on the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair blog. Just click on the link. After it's all over, you can still tune in to the replay at the same link.

We would be remiss in not mentioning that we're in the midst of Our Thankful Sale during the month of November. Everything under $100 is available at 50% off its regular price. Everything over $100 is available at 20% off. That includes books, of course, but also maps and prints. If we have time, we'll show you some of our extensive collection of maps as well.

The Rare Book Cafe is sponsored by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair and affords book lovers an extraordinary opportunity to learn about and enjoy seeing rare books and talking to antiquarian book dealers. It's the next best thing to being at a book fair.