sunset in santa monica

Jesse and I took a stroll to the beach after work the other day. Here are a few pictures:

favorite musician EVER

I finally got to see Mason Jennings in concert. He was awesome. He sang all of the songs from his new CD (which had just come out the week before) and I loved them, but I wish he had played a few more of his older songs. I think other people did too. He wasn't very chatty, but hearing the music live was more than enough. The other band members were pretty great too, especially the other guitarist who was wearing the nerdiest glasses I have seen since the 4th grade. Jesse also noticed that Mason's thumbs were abnormally long, which was a little creepy...yet cool. I LOVE MASON JENNINGS.

Bonus: the concert was at El Rey Theatre, an art deco building built in 1936 as a movie theater.

We're waiting....

I am a true fan, with a t-shirt to prove it.

Please note: awesome nerdy glasses!

santa monica book fair

I must be a real rare book librarian: I got an invitation in the mail at work for discounted admission to the Santa Monica Antiquarian Book, Print, Photo and Paper Fair. So I figured it was my professional duty to stop by. Antiquarian booksellers were selling rare books, works of art on paper, vintage posters, and old advertisements. It was great fun to walk around and see what everyone had. One of the highlights for me was a small early 17th century book of maps by Ortelius, who is generally thought of as the creator of the first modern atlas. I also saw a lot of books that we often showed to users in the RB&ML, which made me nostalgic.

But what was funny is that I expected to be most impressed by all the really old, really rare books, but I was actually most drawn in by early editions of books I read as a child. One bookseller had a whole shelf-full of first and early editions of Anne of Green Gables books, which I basically lived on growing up. It was so fun to see how they looked when they were first published. The bookseller told me that first editions of Anne of Green Gables go for as much as $20k because there were not many printed at the time (the one in the link sold for $12.5k, and Antiques Roadshow appraised one at $12-18k). That's as much as the prices on first editions ($12k) and signed first editions ($20k) of Hemingway. Surprising, right? On the topic of books I read as a child, I also got to see a letter written by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Bonus: on the way to the book fair, I walked by a yard sale (if you can call it that...it was located on the little bit of grass between the sidewalk and the street), and a French woman moving to Australia with the same size feet as me was getting rid of as much as possible. I walked away with five pairs of shoes for $10. Not bad!