Hobart Rebirth....SIGH......

November 25, 2005
Day Trip
A Visit in the Country: Fresh Air, Old Books
By JOHN MOTYKA
HARD by the half-timbered, half-cultivated slopes of the Catskill foothills, the tiny village of Hobart, N.Y., perches above the ice-edged West Branch of the Delaware River, looking from a distance like a classic sleepy hill town. This part of the state, north of the Catskill Park proper in rural Delaware County, rich in scenic views framed by undulating lines of hill, field and sky, is known more for quiet than for commerce.

But drive down into Hobart on rural Route 10 and you'll find an adventurous group of entrepreneurs who have decided to make Hobart, with its neighboring villages of South Kortright and Stamford, a destination for book lovers.

Exhibiting canniness and humility in equal measure, the owners of five used and antiquarian bookstores have banded together to form the Hobart Book Village. The concept is patterned loosely on the example of Hay-on-Wye, the prototypical and highly successful village in Wales that now has about 40 used bookstores and holds an annual international literary festival.

The Hobart stores, which started operating as a cluster in May, have a long way to go to achieve the mass of Hay-on-Wye, and most still operate only on weekends (though all expect to keep longer hours this holiday season). But already Hobart Book Village visitors not only can shop and have a cup of good coffee in a charming rural setting; they can also choose from tens of thousands of books, from used paperbacks and recent best sellers to, a few weeks ago at one of the stores, a rare first edition of James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."

Three of the bookstores are in the village center of Hobart itself, on an otherwise down-at-the-heels Main Street (Route 10).

Bill Adams, a retired New York physician, and his wife Diana, a lawyer, exhibit a modesty about their store, Wm. H. Adams Antiquarian Books, that seems in contradiction to its trim refinement.

"These are just the early days," said Mr. Adams, who hopes eventually to expand to seven-day-a-week operation. Yet their shop, which has a deck where customers can sip coffee and look down on a small waterfall, already spans centuries.

One afternoon in November, Mr. Adams proudly showed a visitor a handsomely rebound copy of a second edition of the works of Hippocrates in Greek and Latin that was published in Geneva in 1657. It is priced at $1,500. Another rare item was a first edition of "Humphrey's Ancient Coins," a work published in 1850 on coins of ancient Greece, Rome and the Middle East.

The Adamses have operated their store since 2002, and both said they loved the give-and-take with a clientele that included university professors who read Latin and Greek, young browsers, local people and New Yorkers with second homes in Delaware County. "Neither one of us knew how much we would learn from our customers," Mr. Adams said. They are sponsoring a winter series of Sunday lectures in which speakers will read from and discuss works about magic, poetry, history and gardening.

Across the street is the Library Shop, a rambling set of rooms with used books for the general reader and the informal atmosphere of a work in progress, and a few doors down is the Hobart Book Mart, a smaller store with a comfortable in-house coffee bar called Cook the Books. The Library Shop and the Book Mart are owned by Don Dales, who also restores furniture, once taught piano at Ulster County Community College and is enthusiastic about connecting people to books in a relaxed setting. "We're offering an experience as much as a used book," he said.

Hop into the car for a 10-minute drive past stately old farmhouses on County Route 18 (known locally as Back River Road) on your way to the Bibliobarn on Roses Brook Road in South Kortright, a converted red and white horse-and-carriage barn that holds 50,000 books. Inside, two floors of pleasantly crowded wooden bookshelves rise to varying heights and a window on the right provides glimpses of fallow winter fields.

Near a stairway is an assortment of printing equipment, including a a wooden sewing frame and a small press with type that is set by hand, that H. L. Wilson, co-owner of the store with his wife, Linda, uses to restore and rebind books by hand. The barn exudes a sense of the past and an appreciation for the tactile pleasures of books.

Linda Wilson, who said she "leads three lives" as a bookseller, an ordained Episcopalian priest and a master's degree candidate in theology, was an early promoter and champion of the book village concept. Shoppers won't necessarily travel to one bookstore, she said, but "people will get off the Thruway when they know there are five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 shops."

It was Bibliobarn, in business since 1996, that had the James Joyce first edition for sale last month for $3,500. The book was published in 1916 in New York after British printers shunned it. Mr. Wilson said the store also had books "from Frank Lloyd Wright to how to build a johnny house; from Aaron Copland to Dolly Parton; from Faulkner to Kinky Friedman."

Scott Quehl, a Philadelphia resident who lives part-time in nearby Delhi, was carrying an armload of books to the counter. For him, Delaware County is "a place of peace and reflection," he said, that is only enhanced by being able "to get two or three boxes of books and just read."

ON the way to the last book stop, take a break for dinner at the Hidden Inn in South Kortright, built as a hotel in 1893 and now a popular restaurant with spacious dining rooms and a cozy bar. The pub-style menu offers good burgers and fajitas; more formal dinner fare includes dishes like a well-prepared rack of lamb roasted with rosemary and garlic ($17).

Fortified, drive on to Blenheim Hill Books, at the northern edge of Stamford, a vacation destination from the 1880's to the 1940's and home to rambling old hotel buildings and houses dripping with Victorian gingerbread. Blenheim Hill's owner, Pat Parks, said she bought 25,000 books from the Wilsons over a three-day period to start her business in 1998.

Like some of the other booksellers, she now goes on what she called "book buying expeditions" to private collections, moving sales, estate sales, library sales and even thrift shops.

The Adamses, who have bought books in Hay-on-Wye and elsewhere in Europe, have made some unexpected acquisitions. Ms. Adams tells of unpacking books purchased from an antiques dealer for five dollars a box; the first book she pulled out was a first edition of Raymond Chandler's classic "The Big Sleep." Mr. Wilson, searching an old attic, came upon a collection of letters exchanged by the anarchist Emma Goldman and her lover, Alexander Berkman.

The Wilsons find good book hunting in Delaware County itself. "There are a lot of books in these hills," Ms. Wilson said.

In a time when substantial book business has moved to the Internet, the Hobart village dealers seem defiantly confident that they can still lure patrons to their hills. "There is a certain segment of the population," Mr. Dales said, "that likes to handle and touch books."

If You Go

Hobart is located on New York Route 10, which can be reached from the south and east via state Routes 28, 23 and 42, and from the north and west via Interstate 88 and Route 10. Three of the bookshops in the Hobart Book Village group are on Route 10, which is Main Street in Hobart; two others are a short drive away.

All bookshops will be open every day for holiday shopping Dec. 17 to 24.

Wm. H. Adams Antiquarian Books (Main Street and Maple Avenue, Hobart; 607-538-9080; www.whabooks.com) is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday. The next lecturer in its Winter Respite Series, on selected Sunday afternoons at 3 p.m., will be Gene Doane, a magician, on Dec. 18.

The Library Shop (607 Main Street, Hobart; 607- 538-9788) is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sunday and Monday holidays. Hobart Book Mart/Cook the Books (Main Street, Hobart; 607- 538-9788) opens one hour earlier. Pastries and coffee or tea may be consumed in a charming reading room with a river view.

Bibliobarn (627 Roses Brook Road, South Kortright; 607- 538-1555) is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 1 to 6 p.m. on Sunday.

Blenheim Hill Books (290 Steiber Road, Stamford; 607- 652-4093) is open at irregular hours and by appointment.

Dinner entrees at the Hidden Inn (Delaware County Route 18, South Kortright; 607- 538-9259) are $10 to $20; there is also a pub menu.

The Catskill Scenic Trail, a 26-mile scenic trail for walking, biking or cross-country skiing, is about 100 yards from Hobart's village center..



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