Tomes Sweet Tomes : Memories and Other Treasures Abound at What Experts Call America’s Best Old-Book Fair

This begins with a secondhand story about a secondhand book. About a little girl who is now grown up and walks into a bookstore. She is looking for a storybook long lost but unforgotten, unforgettable--the first book she ever read.

She could not recall the title exactly, or the author. But it was about horses and it had a blue cover and was big, really big, the size of a serving platter, about that she was sure.

Bookseller Donald Reisler remembers going through the shelves of his family specialty bookstore in Virginia, narrowing the possibilities, finally zeroing in on the very book.

But now, in the hand of a grown-up, it turns out to be not big at all, just a regular-size child’s book.

In our imaginations certain books always remain big, never mind their size.

Which is as good a rationale as any for an event with the sober-sounding marquee of the 29th annual California International Antiquarian Book Fair, now (through Sunday) underway at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton Hotel. Experts agree that this event, which rotates every other year between here and San Francisco, is America’s greatest showcase for out-of-print books of all sizes and ages.

“For books, the California fair is it. Not only are there more dealers here, these are the best dealers in the world. There aren’t even any pretenders,” says Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of the authoritative 1995 book about lasting books, “A Gentle Madness.”

And not incidentally, such a fair--with two ballrooms full of the most memorable, famous, sentimental, odd, obscure, rare, beautiful, zany, never-say-die books in commercial circulation--annually affirms that not everything about words can be reduced to a chip, a disk or an electron beam, never mind what they call our era.

In his 1995 book on the future of everything, “The Road Ahead,” software mogul Bill Gates includes a CD. When it is inserted in a computer and called to the screen, a replica of the book appears. A click of the mouse turns the page of the virtual book while the CD speakers mimic a familiar sound: the virtual crinkle of a page turning.

“The Road Ahead” is not sold here.

But Hemingway is, and Shakespeare and Kerouac and Dickens and Steinbeck and countless thousands of others, some from as far back as just after the Middle Ages and some as recent as the younger days of the middle-aged.

Craig Graham of Vagabond Books in Brentwood is displaying a copy of Raymond Chandler’s mystery “High Window.” At a yard sale, you could buy a paperback copy for perhaps 50 cents. Graham’s copy is priced at $25,000.

The difference? Not in the meaning of Chandler’s words, of course, but in the meaning of this book, a first edition inscribed by the author to a famous film director who was later to figure in Chandler’s life. A copy of “Finnegan’s Wake” signed by James Joyce is marked at $3,500.

“It’s the story that changes your life sometimes,” says Graham. “You can find it here. It’s like a museum with some of history’s greatest books offered for sale. It’s like going to 200 book dealers around the world.”

To be precise, 210 dealers from all over North America and Europe. Each occupies a booth the size of a small office, crammed with their best stock. If past attendance is a guide, about 11,000 people will pass through during the weekend, paying a daily admission of $5 to browse books that cost from many thousands to $30 or less.

“These are the foundation blocks of our culture,” says Glen Dawson, the retired owner of Dawson’s Books in Pasadena and an original member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Assn. of America, sponsor of the show. “In our age, books like this become even more important. There are all kinds of computer gadgets, more all the time, but there always has to be the original of something, too.”

Why celebrate books?

For the contrariness of it, if nothing else.

A generation ago, Marshal McLuhan, guru of the future, predicted the “death of print.”

Not just yet, old boy.

But today’s young don’t read, you say.

Why, then, are a fifth of the new general circulation books sold today designed for children? Why do they call the 1990s the golden age of illustrated children’s books?

“Books are physical objects. Part of what makes a book wonderful is it’s a physical experience,” says Reisler of the Vienna, Va., antiquarian children’s bookstore Joann Reisler Ltd., named after his wife. “When you own a book and read it and then put it on the shelf, there is always a tendril of memory connecting you there. . . .

“The significance of a book begins with the child. There is an imprint that a first book leaves on us.”

Adults describe similar sensations. An obscure book perhaps reawakens nostalgia for the 1950s, such as the Africa adventure “Horn of the Hunter” by Robert Ruark, a writer whose fame has dimmed but refuses to flicker out. Or you might indulge yourself in the idle satisfaction of knowing that the old college-days copy you have of Tom Robbins’ “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” now fetches up to $400. Or over at Russ Todd Books of Cave Creek, Ariz., you can look through 100 years worth of real-life tales of cowboys and Indians and the Old West.

“All this,” says Todd, sweeping his arm around the ballroom, “this is history itself.”