Friday 20 April 2007

Lifeline Book Fair

One of the great Canberra social events is the Lifeline Book Fair. Every six months Lifeline holds a second hand book sale, selling books donated by the Canberra community. I usually try and get there on opening morning to pick up whatever chess books I can find.
Unfortunately I was delayed this morning (by work) and by the time I arrived all the chess books had gone. I was able to pick up a few books on other topics so the morning wasn't a complete loss. Also, the organisers replenish the tables every couple of hours, so hopefully there might be some books waiting for me when I return.
What I do find interesting at the book fair is the number of books on Bridge that are for sale. They easily outnumber the chess books by a factor of 5 or 6 to 1, and have done so at almost all Book Fairs I have been to. I've also noticed this at second hand book shops, although not at Bookshops selling new books.
I have two theories about this. (A) Chess players are bigger hoarders of books and would rather sell their children to gypsies than sell their books. (B) Bridge players are much older than chess players and therefore die sooner, and their heirs don't care for Bridge.
Now I'm not saying either theory is correct, but I would be interested in hearing alternatives.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

An alternative is that bridge is about as boring as bat shit, so ex-players/their heirs just cannot wait to get rid of the dross.

From a non-chess/bridge player but I really do prefer watching chess than bridge

Anonymous said...

I was at Lifeline at 10:10 this morning and found a near perfect copy of A History of Chess by J.GIZYCKI 1972 for $7 , Chess Treasury of The Air Edited by Terrance Tiller 1966 for $2 and Computer Chess by Packman & Kuhnmund 1986 for $2.
What a bargain. It's worth going early.