November 18 - book show

They're dangerous, book shows. A decade ago I came awfully near to spending about a thousand bucks on an early copy of John Evelyn's Silva (among other things, a late 17th-century manual on forestry): good condition, illustrated, large format, and last year I saw a similar one for three thousand, so I'm newly alert to the sense of market in these things, rather than just acquisition.

But this show wasn't too difficult for me. There were a few very good tables of BC history, including forestry and related topics, but there were many more tables of postcards and comic books, all of which were being pored over by just the stereotypes you might imagine. I was both impressed and troubled by the table with 18" by 24" oil paintings of fantasy characters, such as Alan Rickman as Severus Snape.

Anyway, I somehow managed to spend less than I budgeted, but I've certainly confirmed the depth of my nerdishness:

• Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, This Is The American Earth ($1: conservationism from 1960)
• Diamond Jenness, The Indians of Canada ($20: the 1955 third edition, by the oddly named onetime head of anthropology at the Royal BC Museum here in Victoria - a dated but fascinating book, and still important in the field)
• Dick North, The Mad Trapper of Rat River ($1, author autograph: about Albert Johnson, who in winter 1932 covered 150 miles in 48 days while engaged in a running gun battle with the RCMP, through temperatures averaging the mythical forty below)
• Dick Turner, Nahanni ($5: autobiography of a sane trapper, if there is such a thing, who lived in the Northwest Territories, around and along the Nahanni River)
• H.N. Whitford and Roland D. Craig, Forests of British Columbia ($5: I thought I was the only person likely to want to pay for a 1918 Royal Commission on forests, but there were some other candidates for that honour at the show today)

If only I could quit marking and read these gems....