The 2023 Newberry Book Fair – The Newberry – July 28-30, 2023

The book fair reminds me of an early scene in a scary movie, no, not the library scene in Ghostbusters, although . . . . But, rather, replace a few paleontologists, or perhaps more accurately paleozoologists, digging for Jurassic Period fossils of the extinct triceratops, tyrannosaurus and velociraptor in Montana (actually Red Rock Canyon State Park in California), with hundreds of bibliophiles digging through piles of near-extinct, dinosaur-equivalent paper books, trying to resurrect the species, which has been decimated, not by an asteroid 66-million years ago, but by publishers like Peanut Press, and later the asteroid-like Amazon, less than three decades ago, with the advent of e-books.

The animal analogy continues as you make your way past the squirreling area, where you’re allowed to hide books, not acorns, and not overnight, from your competition while you look for more treats in one of the three rooms set aside for bargain-hunting patrons who got their training on Christmas mornings at FAO Schwartz battling one another over Beanie Babies, Tickle Me Elmos and Cabbage Patch Kids.

Unlike the employees of Jurassic Park, who take a potentially dangerous situation and make it worse, the staff and volunteers at the library do an amazing job of preparing and replenishing the tables holding 73 different subject-matter categories, providing information and processing sales, which, by the way, are BYOB (bring your own bag), or, in some cases, shopping carts.

The message is, even with the demise of the brick-and-mortar bookstore, to analogize the words of Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, books find a way.