School textbooks aren’t the only tomes to dig into in September. Labor Day weekend is a time for big book sales at local libraries throughout Connecticut.
Redding has one of the biggest annual book fairs in the state, or anywhere for that matter. The 64th Annual Mark Twain Library Book Fair takes place Friday through Monday. The sale is so big that it’s not held at the library but at the nearby Redding Community Center on Lonetown Road.
“We tend to think it’s the greatest thing that’s ever been invented,” said Catherine Riordan, who helps organize the sale.
Gathering books for the event is a year-round endeavor, with 10 volunteers meeting three times a week to sift through around 100,000 donated books. The volunteers sort books into around 75 different categories and discard a fair number of them (there’s no interest in outdated science textbooks or incomplete encyclopediae).
Generally, 65,000 volumes are put up for sale. That’s enough books to stock a dozen small bookshops, or as many books as can be found in a lot of town libraries. The 100,000 number is especially impressive since the population of Redding is just 9,000 people.
Each year, the donated books can skew differently.
“This year we have an astounding number of DVDs and games,” Riordan said. She’s also impressed with the sheer variety of children’s books this year.
One of the special donations received this year comes from the estate of Mary Travers, the Mary from the 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary. Travers lived Redding until her death in 2009.
A framed flier commemorating a 1992 Peter, Paul & Mary concert benefiting the Redding Community Center. The folk trio’s Mary Travers, who lived in Redding until her death in 2009, organized the benefit. This year Travers’ daughter Alicia donated the family’s book collection to the annual Labor Day weekend Mark Twain Library Book Fair held at the community center. (Courtesy of the Mark Twain Library)
Travers’ daughter, Alicia, reached out to the library last August. With that year’s sale just days away, the library saved the donation for this year. Riordan said Travers read widely and that her collection includes “music, science and just about everything Upton Sinclair ever wrote.” A prolific novelist, journalist, playwright and political activist in the first half of the 20th century, Sinclair wrote nearly 100 books, including “The Jungle,” “Oil!” and the 11-novel Lanny Budd series.
“They had a little of everything,” Riordan said of Travers’ and her daughter’s literary tastes. “They were self-taught. They read everything.”
Going through Travers’ books, the library volunteers discovered that the singer had gotten some of them at previous Mark Twain Library book sales. While Travers apparently wasn’t a regular visitor to the library itself, “she loved Redding and she loved the book fair,” Riordan said. In 1992, she arranged a Peter, Paul & Mary concert specifically to raise money for a new sound system at the community center. Travers was also an early supporter of the library’s Allen and Helen Hermes Arts Series, which has been running for over 20 years now.
Travers’ books will be displayed in various places around the book fair. Some will be in the “Collectors Corner” of rare and special books, while others will have been sorted into appropriate categories. There will be signs noting they came from Travers.
Mary Travers, of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, lived in Redding toward the end of her life. She died at 72 at Danbury Hospital in 2009, five years after being diagnosed with leukemia.
The library has received books from many local celebrities over the years, beginning with Mark Twain, who helped found the library in 1908 with his personal book collection when he became a Redding resident toward the end of his life. Riordan said other donors have ranged from writer/editor George Plimpton to political consultant Dick Morris to environmentalist Mary Anne Guitar (founder of the Redding Land Trust) to a champion quilter who left the area and gave the library a massive collection of quilting books.
Beyond Travers and her love for Sinclair, highlights of this year’s fair includ books about the Civil War from an extensive private collection, notable art and photography books, a slew of recently published Harlequin Romance novels, a selection of books in French, Spanish, Chinese and Polish that includes many non-fiction titles, sheet music and music instruction manuals, a signed copy of one of Burke Davis’ biographies of Robert E. Lee from the 1950s and a range of titles by the genius children’s book author/illustrator Maurice Sendak, a longtime Ridgefield resident.
The hours for the Mark Twain Library Book fair are Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Monday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Admission is free, as is parking. The books are individually priced, except on Monday when there’s a set price of $10 for a box of books. That deal clears out a lot of the inventory so that the library can start preparing right away for next year.
Redding isn’t the only Connecticut town to hold a big book sale over Labor Day weekend. The annual book sale at Bill Library on Colonel Ledyard Highway in Ledyard begins Friday and runs through Sept. 5, starting with a member night Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. (free for library members, $10 non-members), then Saturday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Most books are priced at $2 for hardcovers and $1 for paperbacks. Besides dozens of categories of books, the sale offers games, DVDs, CDs, puzzles and more.
The Goshen Public Library will have thousands of books for sale at the Goshen Agricultural Fair on Route 63 from Saturday to Monday. The fair hours are Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Monday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Hardcover books are $2 or $3 and paperback books are 50 cents up to $1.
For more information on the Mark Twain Library Book Fair at the Redding Community Center, go to marktwainlibrary.org.
