Karen Willett and Geri Tobias responded last fall to New Canaan Library’s call for volunteers to help lead the organization’s biennial and hugely popular Book Sale for different reasons.
Geri Tobias (L) and Karen Willett are co-leaders of the New Canaan Library’s Book Sale, running Friday through Sunday. Credit: Michael Dinan
Willett, a resident of New Canaan for just about six months at the time, had moved up here with her family after 15 years in New York City, including two young boys, was looking for ways to get out into the community and loves libraries.
Tobias, a North Stamford resident whose two boys go to the New Canaan YMCA and who calls New Canaan Library her “home” library because it’s closest to her residence, wanted to try something different and do something fun for herself.
First edition of Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”—part of the New Canaan Library Book Sale’s eBay auction.
This year’s sale “is a little different, with more quality books” and “the fact that we have so many decorations around that are tied to the holiday,” Tobias said Friday afternoon as bibliophiles, readers and dealers streamed into Adrian Lamb Room downstairs for the bulk of the sale, and also into the art gallery beside the children’s section where kids’ books once again are sold and featured for this sale.
One week after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, this edition of Time magazine was issued, this copy addressed to New Canaan’s Dick Salant. It’s available in the eBay auction for the library Book Sale.
The New Canaan Library Book Sale will through 5 p.m. Friday, then 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday (when all books will be $5 per bag). Running parallel with the in-library experience is a digital auction on eBay for special collectible books that include a first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” (bidding starts at $50), signed first edition by Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner of “Shameless Exploitation” ($300), Brady Miller’s Complete Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes ($500) and Nov. 29, 1963 Time magazine issue (featuring newly sworn in President Lyndon Johnson) addressed to New Canaan’s Dick Salant.
Signed first edition of “Shameless Exploitation” by Paul Newman and AE Hotchner, available through the eBay auction for the New Canaan Library Book Sale.
Willett said she’d never overseen a book sale prior to her first one last December (she and Tobias are co-leaders of the event), and that though it was a steep learning curve learning how to price books and figure out the logistics of the sale, “we had a lot of help.”
Sales were up at the June Book Sale, said Willett, whose boys attend West School and Camp Playland on Ponus Ridge.