McGill Book Fair

October tends to witness a number of great book fairs in Eastern Canada and the McGill Book Fair is no exception. Though it started way back in the 1970s, I discovered this event while growing up in Montreal in the 1990s and it soon became one of my favourites.  The selection of material is always big and plentiful, and I never walked away from this book fair with anything less than an overflowing bag of booky goodness.

If you're a serious hunter or collector you'll need to get in line early.  The book dealers will start lining up at dawn for the 1pm opening, and no matter how far in advance I arrived, there was always a book dealer parked in a lawn chair in front of me.  While this annoyed me a little, it also reminded me just how much it was worth checking this event out.

My first objective at this fair is to pick up hardcovers for my reference library at a very fair price, but more recently I've also had some good scores when hunting for bookplates in the discount bins.  All in all it's well worth the visit, and I'll be taking a day off next week to drop in and do some shopping.  Perhaps I'll see you there!