2008 Easter Book Fair - Day One

Oh how the bibliophile in me loves the YMCA book fair, held over each Easter long weekend in my home town. One large hall filled with rows of thousands of second hand books: paperbacks, hardcovers and magazines. This year they even took the time to create a 'Penguin' section, loading two trestle tables with stacks of old Penguin paperbacks. It was my first stop, and I came away with some great finds - all for $15.

• Girl With a Monkey by Thea Astley
• The Lonely Strangers by Charity Blackstock
• The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
• The Lives of Animals by J. M. Coetzee
• Beware of the Trains by Edmund Crispin
• The Diamond as Big as the Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Death of a Sardine by Joan Fleming
• My Side of the Mountain by Jean George
• A Writing Life: Interviews with Australian Women Writers by Giulia Giuffré
• Men Without Women: Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway
• Pet Owner's Guide to the Staffordshire Bull Terrier by Clare Lee
• False Scent by Ngaio Marsh
• The Heckler by Ed McBain
• Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• It Must Be True: Classic Newspaper Howlers, Bloomers and Misprints by Denys Parsons
• Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame edited by Robin Robertson
• Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy L. Sayers
• Stranger in the House by Georges Simenon
• The Go-Away Bird and Other Stories by Muriel Spark
• Boys Will Be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton et al by E. S. Turner

I'm especially excited about Girl With a Monkey by Thea Astley. An Australian writer (1925 - 2004), she won the Miles Franklin Award four times. Girl With a Monkey was her debut novel, first published in 1958.

Death of a Sardine by Joan Fleming (first published 1963) was bought mainly for the amusing title and cover (which depicts a skeleton hand holding a sardine in the midst of a cactus bush... where did that idea come from?!).

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy (author of the classic, The Group) is a collection of McCarthy's childhood memories. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is part of the Penguin 70 series, and has a beautiful Art Deco-esque cover.

Mortification: Writer's Stories of Their Public Shame is a collection of real-life stories by well known authors, debunking the myth that their lives are perfect. There are contributions by Margaret Atwood, D. B. C. Pierre, Val McDermid, Margaret Drabble, Edna O'Brien, Carl Hiaasen, Irvine Welsh and Roddy Doyle, just to name a few.

I've been wanting to read a Carson McCullers title for a while now, and particularly The Member of the Wedding, so I was very pleased to find a nicely tatty paperback (my favourite kind) in the Penguin section.

My Side of the Mountain by Jean George (first published 1959) was one of my all-time childhood favourites. It's the story of a boy who runs away to the Catskill Mountains with just a penknife and an axe. He learns to hunt and forage for food, he makes a shelter, he tames a falcon... he basically does what I often wanted to do as a child: he escapes.

My last good find was Boys Will Be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton et al by E. S. Turner. First published in 1948, it's a guide to the world of pre-1950s boy's comics and their characters. This is the revised and updated edition, with a great cover illustration taken from a painting by Hassall.