Tell your Goodreads typing hand to buckle the fuck up because the Antiquarian Book Fair is coming to Southern Maryland, and nothing will ever be the same. This is where you separate the men from the older men who simmer with feelings of superiority over people that are younger and better looking but can’t name the greatest novel of 1863 (it’s What Is To Be Done? by Nikolay Chernevsky, you moron).

Thousands will gather in a convention center with confusing parking and out of order bathroom faucets for the literary equivalent of Woodstock ‘99. They’ve come for one thing: to absolutely lose their shit over old books. These are the party animals who travel cross-country to see every footnote in person. The kind of maniacs who whisper “untrimmed edges” with unbound desire and an uncomfortable hint of eroticism.

We’re talking a convention filled with 50 year olds with the bodies of 65 year olds. We’re talking vendors lingering over you while you look at books with the implication that if you don’t buy something you will ruin your day. We’re talking smells that you can’t identify but know you don’t like. Every vendor gives off the energy of a Lovecraft protagonist, frightened, damp, and barely human.

This is where rare book dealers from around the world descend to flex on each other with passive aggression of War and Peace-length proportions. Think first editions, incunabula, illuminated manuscripts, pamphlets about 18th-century dentistry, and a copy of Ulysses so annotated it legally counts as a second book. Forget the AVN awards, the really hotties in leather will be the collected poetry of Thomas Hardy aching to be touched.

The crowd is equally unhinged. You’ve got the rich guy who once touched a Gutenberg and won’t shut up about it. The guy you are pretty sure is looking for books bound in human skin but pretends like he is not looking for books bound in human skin. You will see multiple grown adults wearing monocles unironically. Do not approach them unless you’re prepared to discuss 17th-century Dutch engraving technique or you will get kicked in the Dickens (your dick.)

And the books? Oh, the books. One-of-a-kind ephemera like a 1643 guide to polite sword fighting. A children’s book written entirely in Latin, illustrated by a monk you’ve never heard of but is apparently incredibly important. A volume so rare its title is technically illegal to say out loud in Delaware. A copy of The Sympathizer that is extremely expensive even though it only came out a few years ago, because it’s an instant classic that defied the bounds of its genre and depiction of a commonly discussed historical event you punk ass bitch.

The stakes? High. One false move near the illuminated manuscripts and you’ll be escorted out faster than you can say “colophon.” Bidding wars break out with the silent fury of a Jane Austen heroine. Last year someone sneezed on a rare copy of The Metamorphosis and is now trapped in a Kafka estate lawsuit no one understands.

So how do you prepare? Hydrate. Carb-load. Bring cash, some cough drops, and your most judgmental friend. Train your core, you’ll need it to crouch for 45 minutes at the “Misc. Esoterica” table. And above all, remember this: dog-earing a page is punishable by scalping, Blood Meridian style.

This is your moment. The Thunderdome of Thoreau. A paper-based bacchanal. Get there early, stay until they shut the lights off, and don’t blink or you’ll miss the deal of the century on a 1721 cookbook for chaste bachelors. The Southern Maryland Antiquarian Book Fair is calling, pick up the fucking phone.