Rare Book Cafe LIVE on Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time

🔴 RARE BOOK CAFE 5.0 (S5 E25) How are you adding to your collection in this time of isolation? Are you spending more time reading? Are you ordering your books online? Our guests are Texas bookseller Bryan Young and Meredith Myers, the Stand-up Librarian. Rare Book Cafe, a world leader in social distancing since 2015. This program is on Facebook. To participate in the conversation, please use this link. The LIVE program begins at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Rare Book Cafe LIVE. Join the conversation on Facebook

🔴 RARE BOOK CAFE 5.0 (S5 E24) Book restoration expert Sophia Bogle shares the questions to ask before you get your book repaired. Plus, tiny books expertise, a visit from Felix O’Neill and more. Rare Book Cafe, a world leader in social distancing since 2015. This program is on Facebook. To participate in the conversation, please use this link. The LIVE program begins at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time

What's coming up for the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair? You can get a glimpse in this ongoing live streamed TV program

Here's a glimpse of some of what to expect at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair in April. This is Rare Book Cafe, the world's only regularly scheduled live streamed TV program devoted to rare and collectible books. You can watch it in real time each Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time on the Rare Book Cafe page on Facebook. For the next few weeks, you'll meet booksellers who will be exhibiting at the book fair. Tickets for the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair can be ordered online. In the right column on this blog page you'll find a BUY TICKETS NOW link where you can have them delivered to your email instantly.

Jacobean miniature traveling library of 50 tiny books is stored in a wooden case that looks like a large folio volume

We just love this. We think our friend Edie Eisenstein, who does a segment about miniature books on the Rare Book Cafe would love it, too. This is billed as a first travel-sized library, a Jacobean miniature library that was the only way an avid reader could take a library along on a trip in 17th century England. It's a wooden case fixed up to look like a folio.

This photo by the extraordinary Irish photographer Darren O'Brien was part of an article that appeared in the UK's Daily Mail a couple of years ago but has recently resurfaced and has been making the rounds online. You really ought to take the time to look at the article and O'Brien's amazing photographs of the collection of miniatures in the possession of the University of Leeds. This is a fairly rare specimen. Apparently, only four were made. It dates from 1617. A researcher at the school's library was quoted as saying: "It's essentially a 17th century e-book reader such as a Kindle."

Now, that's not a word we often use in any context much less related to antiquarian books.

Rare Book Cafe 2.0 is on the air today at 2:30 p.m. ET Today's guest: Kara Accettola, Little Sages Books, ABAA

Welcome to the third episode of Rare Book Cafe 2.0, the rebooted program now on YouTube (broadcasting live on Google Hangouts on the Air). Rare Book Cafe originated on Blab.im in 2015 but the platform shut down in August 2016.

Guest: Kara Accettola, owner of Little Sages Books, ABAA in Fort Lauderdale. Kara has a primary focus on women, non-elitist narratives, art, social history and culture. A new 'microcatalog' project began this year, with selected thematic gatherings in digital and printed form.

Miami Beach bookseller Steven Eisenstein is the host of Rare Book Cafe. Thorne Donnelley, owner of Liberty Books in West Palm Beach, and Lindsay Thompson, owner of Henry Bemis Books in Charlotte, North Carolina, are co-hosts. Rare Book Cafe features Edie Eisenstein's Very Small Bookshelf.

T. Allan Smith is creator and executive producer.

Rare Book Cafe is sponsored by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, celebrating its 36th year on April 21-23, 2016 at The Coliseum in downtown St. Petersburg. Florida Antiquarian Book Fair features more than 100 booksellers offering rare, used, and collectible book, vintage prints, antique maps, vintage photographs, autographs, and collectible printed matter of all kinds.

If you have questions about the show, questions about rare or collectible books that you would like to have answered on the show or if you would like to join us in the virtual studio audience, send us an email at rarebookcafe@gmail.com.

Rare Book Cafe 2.0 is on the air today at 2:30 p.m. ET Today's guest: Rick Wilber, author of Alien Morning

Welcome to the second episode of Rare Book Cafe 2.0, the rebooted program now on YouTube (broadcasting live on Google Hangouts on the Air). Rare Book Cafe originated on Blab.im in 2015 but the platform shut down in August 2016.

Guest: Rick Wilber, author of Alien Morning. Rick teaches mass communications at the University of South Florida. He is an award-winning writer, editor and teacher. He has published more than 40 short stories, several novels and short-story collections, two edited anthologies, a memoir, and a half-dozen college textbooks on writing and the mass media.

Miami Beach bookseller Steven Eisenstein is the host of Rare Book Cafe. Thorne Donnelley, owner of Liberty Books in West Palm Beach, and Lindsay Thompson, owner of Henry Bemis Books in Charlotte, North Carolina, are co-hosts. Rare Book Cafe features Edie Eisenstein's Very Small Bookshelf.

T. Allan Smith is creator and executive producer.

Rare Book Cafe is sponsored by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, celebrating its 36th year on April 21-23, 2016 at The Coliseum in downtown St. Petersburg. Florida Antiquarian Book Fair features more than 100 booksellers offering rare, used, and collectible book, vintage prints, antique maps, vintage photographs, autographs, and collectible printed matter of all kinds.

If you have questions about the show, questions about rare or collectible books that you would like to have answered on the show or if you would like to join us in the virtual studio audience, send us an email at rarebookcafe@gmail.com.

Rare Book Cafe: How Thorne became a book dealer

Here's the latest episode of Rare Book Cafe, the world's first and only Blab TV show about antiquarian books. It was broadcast live today on blab.im at 2:30 p.m. EDT. In it, bookseller Thorne Donnelley, who owns Liberty Books in West Palm Beach and is an exhibitor at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, tells about his beginnings in the antiquarian book business.

This show has several new features, including a short segment with Edie Eisenstein, who loves miniature books and talks lovingly about them in this episode. Look for Edie to return as a regular feature in future episodes. Host Steven Eisenstein also introduced another new feature, Hidden Treasures, in which guests will be asked to discuss special volumes from their collections. Steve asks himself and others questions in another new feature called The Third Degree, an homage to the classic technique cops used to interrogate bad guys in old detective novels. Several visitors dropped in to ask questions about their own collections.

The Rare Book Cafe is sponsored by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair and appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Check the Scheduled list in blab.com for times and dates. Subscribe to the program so you won't miss anything.

You can watch the replay of Rare Book Cafe above, or on blab.im if you want to see the comments from the audience shown in text on the side.

If you have thoughts or comments about Rare Book Cafe, please send an email. We'd love to hear from you.