Saturday 19 September 2015

2015 Lifeline Bookfair

That great Canberra tradition, the Lifeline Bookfair is on again this weekend, and once again provided me with an opportunity to pick up some second hand chess books. But unlike previous years, I was a little late to get going, as I was busy on Friday running a school chess event, rather than standing in a queue of 500 people waiting for the doors to open.
This gave other collectors first bite of the cherry, while I arrived a number of hours later to pick through the scraps. However, even with the delayed start there were quite a good collection of books there, although my choice was limited due to the fact that I already owned copies of most of them. To my own collection I added copies of Logical Chess Move by Move, New Traps in the Chess Opening (from 1964 mind you) and Learn Chess (to replace a missing copy). One new addition was Brilliance in Chess by Gerald Abrahams, which was a title I was previously unaware existed. Books I did not buy included Chess Praxis (there were even two copies on offer), Nigel Short's Chess Skills (which someone else pointed out is a very slim book), and Purdy's book on the Fischer v Spassky Match.
I'll intend to head back tomorrow afternoon for one final search, but I suspect that all that's left is what I have already seen. But at least the advantage of going at the end of the sale (as opposed to the start) is that everything left over is heavily discounted, so what I miss out in quality, I may make up in quantity.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are actually very lucky you was not among the very first in. None of the books you got were on the table except one of the chess praxis when I was there. They must be added after from those under the table boxes ...

MachoM said...

I would certainly have bought the Purdy-book...

Best Wishes

Henrik Mortensen