April 22's Rare Book Cafe is live from St Petersburg, and you can be part of the program!

Today: Rare Book Cafe goes bookhounding!

It’s Day 2 of the 36th Florida Antiquarian Book Fair in St Petersburg! Rare Book Cafe will be there live: Steve & Edie, Thorne, T. Allan (as he is known YouTube Personality circles), and Lindsay will all be broadcasting live from the Coliseum this afternoon from 2:30 to 5:00 pm, EDT.

It’s gonna be like one of those old CBS crossover series reunion movies: Mr Haney makes Kate’s year booking the Shady Rest for the 1st Annual Greater Pixley International Book and Ephemera Exposition, kicking off a mad search for collectibles: Ellie May Clampett returns from years in Africa working with Jane Goodall teaching her chimps, Skipper and Bessie, to read; Lisa Douglas claims Gutenberg was really Hungarian and started out printing menus for her many-times-great grandfather; Sam Drucker discovers Wallace Stevens was his grandpa’s insurance agent and used to send draft poems with the premium renewals; Eb reveals his secret stash of correspondence with Camus; and Arnold (How do you spell Ziffle? Z-I-Effle-Effle-L-E) buys off a butcher with a signed first of Animal Farm, while in the background Homer Bedloe tries to shut down the Cannonball and cut off all the ABAA members flocking to Hooterville!

2:30 to 3:20 Allan Smith will set up the Live Broadcast Booth outside the adjoining alcoves of A-Bric-A-Brac and Liberty Books, where Rare Book cohosts Steven and Edie Eisenstein and Thorne Donnelley will give a real-time demo of what it’s like being a book fair vendor.

N.B. Bring your own cocoanuts.

Then Allan’s off with Fair sponsor and Biblio.com Senior Book Pixie Amber Shehan for Day 2 of The Quest to See the Rarest Book, from 3:20 to 4:10 (NOTE TO ALLAN & AMBER: if you find it too early, pretend disappointment and go look some other places, then loop back to find the winner again just before the segment ends. This is, after all, Reality TV). Just yesterday, visiting Stroud Booksellers’ booth, when Amber revealed her quest, owner John Nathan Stroud offered her the choice of a manuscript page from the year 1280 or a book from the early 16th century. It’s the sort of thing that happens there.

At 5:10 comes Part 3 of today’s program (as Julius Caesar wrote, “Et dividitur in tres partes Book Fair est”).

Co-host Kara Accettola – she of Little Sages Books – has some of her friends and colleagues dropping by to talk, as did The Walrus and the Carpenter, of Many Things: among those who’ve already left cartes des visites are Biblio’s Chief Operating Officer and Minister of Finance Allen (“Allan Smith spells his name wrong!” Singleton, and Megan Bell, co-owner of Carrollton, Georgia’s Underground Books (whose plus-sized tote bags are de rigueur for Book Fair veterans); and Forest Proper of Joslin Hall Rare Books!

You, too, can join the chat! Just click this link: https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/j22airdssna63pd7gxjjbex5x4e

If you just want to watch the show, here’s a live link you can click- and share with others- starting at 2:30:

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Rare Book Cafe is sponsored by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. It’s broadcast every Saturday from 2.30 to 3.30 pm EDT and features interviews, panel discussion and stuff you can learn about book collecting whether you are a regular at Sotheby’s or just someone who likes books.

The program airs live on Rare Book Cafe’s and the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair’s Facebook page; the Book Fair Blog, and the Book Fairs YouTube channel. Shows are archived on YouTube and can also be viewed on the Facebook pages, and the blog after their first run.

Hosted by Miami book dealer, appraiser and WDBFRadio.com’s Bucks on the Bookshelf radio show creator Steven Eisenstein, the program features a revolving set of cohosts and regular guests including Thorne Donnelley of Liberty Book Store in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; Lindsay Thompson of Charlotte’s Henry Bemis Books; miniature books expert Edie Eisenstein; and program creator/producer T. Allan Smith.

Rare Book Cafe program encourages viewer participation via its interactive features and video: if you've got an interesting book, join the panel and show it to us! If you’d like to ask the team a question or join us in the virtually live studio audience for the program, write us at rarebookcafe@gmail.com.