Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Our cat Hodge, adopted earlier this year, has settled in nicely at home and now, one might say, the world revolves around him. Which is as it should be. Exhibit A: he has trained me to move his favorite cat bed (i.e. old padded chair seat cover) across the floor, following the patch of sun as it progresses during the day. He is quite comfortable with this arrangement, as you can see:

Sun on the belly, ah. Although he wakes us up around four a.m. each morning, he is quite ready to go back to sleep right around the time we either head into town to work, or finish breakfast, depending on what day of the week it is. I particularly like this photo - please note the fangs barely showing:

He can sleep like this for most of the day, occasionally opening an eye or two to supervise any projects happening in the same room. Watering the plants, say, or having lunch. Here comes the shade - time to move my cushion over:

I can't believe I'm putting pictures of the cat on my blog. Well, it's been a slow week. I've got nothing else. Besides, just look at him. A dear. I do love him so. Even at four a.m., hard as that might be to believe. (Ok, sometimes I do quietly threaten to return him to the cat store, but only if he scratches me on the top of the head before four a.m., in an attempt to wake me up. Which always works.)

I prepare my own canvases to paint on. For those who don't know, the hapless painter visits the art supply store and buys rolls or sheets of canvas and many wooden stretcher bars. Takes them back to the studio, fits four stretcher bars together, squares off the corners, cuts and stretches and staples or tacks the canvas on to the bars. Then puts at least two coats of gesso on the canvases. Voila. Yesterday I visited the art supply store. This afternoon I spent two hours picking bar code stickers off every one of the wooden stretcher bars. All 68 of them. Arg. I swear, it's the little things that drive one mad. The stickers shredded, every one. Loud house music helped. And cursing.

Another fussy job: I've been sorting and packing books in the shop, off and on for the past several weeks. Here's the routine: every book must be taken off the shelf, scrutinized (when did I buy this, how much did I pay for it, what did I price it at, what must I now price it at to sell it at the antiques mall booth, could I sell it online, do I want to read it, will anyone ever buy it at any price), placed in one of several boxes or piles (home, internet, goodwill, antiques mall booth, possible antiquarian bookfair). Every single book. Some sections are easy. I rescue a few great books, and a few valuable books, and the rest gets marked down and goes straight to the booth. Most, though, not so easy. And loud house music does not help. Nor cursing. In fact, distraction of any kind is distressing.

My frontal lobe is weary.

We were driving in to town today and I was rambling on about what in the world am I going to do with all of the huge bookcases in the shop (having too many empty bookcases is certainly not a problem I've ever had before, do you see), and Ryan suggested we take the backs off a few of the nine-footers and use them for raised beds in the garden. Heh. They would indeed make very nice tidy rows for lettuces, carrots, beets, cabbage. I wonder if the polyurethane would be bad for the soil...? Like the bookshop, it's seven years old and has mellowed somewhat. Seriously, though - I have a bookcase dilemma. What to do. I can fit some in at the house. I'm contemplating storing the others in case (no pun intended) I find I must reopen elsewhere because I miss the book madness too much. Besides, we built all these bookcases ourselves, and they aren't fancy but they are sturdy and still have many years of service left in them.

Back to the garden - I planted four rows of potatoes (two each of red and white) and one long row of sweet peas and sugar snap peas last week. The rest of the veg goes in at the end of the month. As I look around the bookshop, I realize that much of my inventory is now worth, according to Amazon, ten cents or less per book. So should I use some pulps for mulch? Again, kidding here. Still, would be cheaper than buying bags of compost.

I was in the supermarket the other day and a great song started playing on the muzak, a song I loved and used to dance to at my favorite club back in the 1980s when I was a punk art student. Fast forward twenty years and here I am looking at the organic pasta sauce, listening to that same song, suddenly feeling the same emotions I used to feel back then. No, feeling them even more intensely than I did then. I could hardly stand it. I couldn't read the label on the pasta because my eyes were misting over. No one told me about this part, I thought. Or people did, at least in books, but for some reason I didn't understand what it meant. Because I was a kid?

Man, the getting older thing, it's rough sometimes.

The news from here. The cat's out of the bag because I've already told a bunch of people, but here it is in public, so to speak: I've closed my bookshop. A good portion of my inventory has already migrated up the street to the antiques co-op, where I rent a booth. More will follow. The dismantling is just beginning. Many of my bookcases are nine feet high and I'm going to have trouble finding new homes for them. I think I'll put some in storage in case I decide to reopen in the future.

Now, listen here. Don't Cry For Me, Argentina, because the sense of freedom I'm feeling is a deeply wonderful thing. Seven years I've been here and I simply need a break from listening to people's stories, and from scraping the overhead together every month, which has gotten harder and harder. However, I do not consider this a failure in any way, shape, or form, because I could continue to scrape by, if I chose to do so. But I do not choose to do so, right now. I've loved having this shop, and I can honestly say there isn't anything else I would rather have done with my time. To be able to say that, that's not bad. Anyway, I'll still be a bookseller, part-time - I'll keep selling a little online, and in the antiques mall, and at the antiquarian bookfair in Maine in September. The other part of the time, I'll be weeding the garden, and painting at the easel - and I've got some great news about that - I've been accepted at an artist-in-residence program for the fall. I go to Connecticut for the month of October. Change! I swear to God, you make one, and others stampede in right behind it.

I'm not going to say what that song was. The one I heard in the pasta aisle. Chances are, you've got your own.

I'm still here, more or less. I'm reading Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn (Oxford 1999) - I picked up a copy of this and one of his other books at another local used bookshop for cheap, because I liked the covers and they did indeed look "Compelling" and they are published by Oxford, whose books I usually cannot resist. Erudition! Scholarship! Classy dust jackets! The introduction begins most thrillingly (p.1):

"This book is for people who want to think about the big themes: knowledge, reason, truth, mind, freedom, destiny, identity, God, goodness, justice. These are not the hidden preserve of specialists. They are things that men and women wonder about naturally, for they structure the ways we think about the world and our place in it. They are also themes about which thinkers have had things to say. In this book I try to introduce ways of thinking about the big themes. I also introduce some of the things thinkers have had to say about them. If readers have absorbed this book, then they should be on better terms with the big themes. And they should be able to read many otherwise baffling major thinkers with pleasure and reasonable understanding."

Sounds great! Yes! Bring it on, right? Well. I found out quickly that there are no apparent conclusions drawn here about these big themes, rather information for drawing our own conclusions via Descartes, Hume, Locke, et al, and their detractors and supporters. Arguments about the big themes. That, and reading sentences that involve logic equations (scary! worrisome! flashbacks to calculus!) made me put the book aside yesterday and pick up an old copy of Heidi instead. Which I'm now almost finished with, and which I feel as if I've gleaned a lot of practically useable philosophy from. The book makes me want to visit giant fir trees and mountain wildflower meadows in Switzerland and gaze with awe upon alpenglow and think about God and the great mysteries of the world. And have a Whitmanesque grandfather who loves me. Finishing reading Heidi will not, however, stop me from attempting another of Simon Blackburn's books, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics (Oxford 2001) - the book bought in tandem with the aforementioned - it's short and upon brief inspection looks to be equation-free. And I'm interested in being good. Though perhaps that was my problem with his book Think - I want to actually think, not learn about how to think.

My days off: I did plant flower and vegetable seeds in little biodegradable peat pots and most of them are showing green sprouts already; the snow is nearly gone around the house and the daffodils and crocuses and some tulips are also showing their first green shoots; I've almost finished reading Tim Mackintosh-Smith's book Yemen; I worked on a few new paintings; I didn't make much money, being closed and all, but I didn't spend any either; and I realized I need to take a longer break from both blogging and shop-keeping. So I'll be on hiatus for a while as I figure things out. I'll be back, I swear. Famous last words...?

I'm taking a break from both the blog and the shop for the next week - doing some spring cleaning of the physical and mental kinds to get rid of the cobwebs of winter for good. Before I head out, the news from here in a nutshell: I'm carrying The Divine Comedy around with me in my bookbag, but haven't started to read it yet; I'm also carrying around Yemen by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, and I have started to read it and it is simply terrific so far; word from the accountant is that I barely broke even last year - no surprise there; best Scrabble word over the weekend was roulades; I'm starting tomatoes and onions and a few flowers from seed this week, inside, in little biodegradable peat pots, then by May they should be big enough to put out in the garden, which is still covered with a foot of snow at the moment. But spring really is just around the corner. Be back early next week after it's official.

Yesterday Jonathan tagged me for this bookish meme that's been making the rounds for a few years: take a look at page 123 of whatever books you're in the middle of at the moment, read down to the fifth sentence, then transcribe the next three sentences after that. Sure, I'll play along, since next to nothing's happening at the shop. I would talk more about the shop, really, if there was anything at all to talk about. Zip. Nada.

On my bedside table at home, and from the current stack at the shop:

1. The Hall of a Thousand Columns by Tim Mackintosh-Smith (Murray 2005), p.123:

"The horsemen rode past. Shaken, he emerged from his hiding place, wandered down into a wadi... and straight into the arms of about forty more rebels. This time there was no escape."

How's that for a cliff-hanger! Nice coincidence. Finished the book last night. Already pining for the next installment. Meanwhile, I've tracked down a copy of his book Yemen, to tide me over.

2. Self-Help by Lorrie Moore (Plume 1986), p.123:

"It (her college writing project) will be about monomania and the fish-eat-fish world of life insurance in Rochester, New York. The first line will be 'Call me Fishmeal,' and it will feature a menopausal suburban husband named Richard, who because he is so depressed all the time is called 'Mopey Dick' by his witty wife Elaine. Say to your roommate: 'Mopey Dick, get it?' Your roommate looks at you, her face blank as a large Kleenex."

Hey, a Melville reference! From the short story How to Become a Writer. I added an extra sentence at the end because that simile was good. I do love Lorrie Moore, but have to read her in snippets because her books are so fraught. Really, if I read one straight through I might have to pull down the shades and take to my bed for a week.

3. The Search for Form in Art and Architecture by Eliel Saarinen (Dover 1985), p.123:

"In his work, the author opens his soul. So does the philosopher. So does the composer. The more direct and honest the work, the deeper does one feel the inner drift that brought this work forth."

Again, added an extra sentence because I liked it so much. The word "his" I can live without. The only bad thing about reading great books from pre-1975 or so are those pesky exclusionary pronouns. Do men notice them? Women sure do, all the time. I think it was Anne Fadiman who said they were like doors slamming in her face, even in the work of authors she loved and respected, like E.B. White. Well, men were the ones being written for, for the most part. Still. Makes it tricky to navigate some otherwise fine writing.

4. Hampshire Days by W.H. Hudson (Duckworth 1928), p.123:

"In scores of works on our shelves, dating from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the glow-worm is depicted giving out its light while crawling on the ground, and in many illustrations the male is introduced, and is shown flying down to its mate. They drew their figures not from life, but from specimens in a cabinet, only leaving out the pins. But the glow-worm is not perhaps a very well known creature."

Yet again, I'm cheating a bit - these are sentences five, six, and seven, because the eighth does not flow well with the others and I find I'm quite rigid about readability on this blog. I have a big collection of W.H. Hudson books, of which I've read nearly none, but I picked up this little hardcover at the friends-of-the-library booksale last weekend and I've been browsing in it. He's one of those authors whose work I want to own for some reason (who knows why), and I deeply loved his memoir of his South American childhood (Far Away and Long Ago), so I continue to amass his books and do plan to read them all someday, though many seem dry as dust.

By the way, who has "scores of works" depicting glow-worms (besides Hudson...)?

5. Cat Talk: What Your Cat is Trying to Tell You by Carole Wilbourn (Publisher's Choice 1991), p.123:

"It was best for Tara to progress slowly so her personality would become well integrated on a long-term basis. Tara had experienced a great deal of emotional and medical stress and it would take her a while to recover. (Paragraph break.) A female cat can sometimes become 'very' pregnant before her person gets the message."

Cat psychology. What can I say, it was fifty cents at the f-o-l sale. Ryan and I have been reading it for fun, because by this point we do know what Hodge is trying to tell us. He's a very vocal cat. When he requires assistance getting a stray catnip mouse unstuck from under the dresser, for instance, he makes a very particular kind of trill. We have come to know it well.

That's it - there are many other books in stacks, of course, waiting to be read, but none that I actually have bookmarks in right now. (Only five books going at once, what's the matter with me!) The whole point of a meme is to pass it along, so I'm tagging Rachel and Ian. In the case of the former I know it's slow in shops right now, so booksellers need something to do (they must be reading), and the latter, I feel, needs to be steered slowly but firmly away from his burgeoning reinterest in D & D. I'm hoping this may deflect him at least temporarily.