Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Well, we've almost made it through January, book-friends. The University of Maine has been back in session for over a week, just a few miles up the road, and thrifty English students have been buying inexpensive copies of their books from yours truly, which always serves to lift both my spirits and my bank balance after paying taxes and various insurances this time of year.

However, I had a professor call me the other day looking for a copy of the book she wanted to use for her class this spring - the book is temporarily between editions and is out of print until summer. It was a how-to book for writing, called Something-something-something Part B. I told her I didn't usually carry books like that (true textbooky-type things), and that the books I carry for writers tend to run more to Strunk & White's The Elements of Style and the like. You know, the classics. Fowler. She took a breath, then said derisively, "Well, that's fine if you want to learn to write like some guy from the 1940s." I was so shocked (I usually am when people are mean, anyway) that I couldn't say a word. A few seconds went by and I stuttered out something like "Well, there you go," while thinking, E.B. White... my god, who wouldn't want to write like E.B. White...

It took me a while to get over that. To be honest, it's been a week and I'm still fretting about it a little. Hence this blog post to get it out of my system. I need to move on.

So, from p. 67 of The Elements of Style: "All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation - it is the Self escaping into the open."

And here's a writing sample from p. 74: "'Clyde Crawford, who stroked the varsity shell in 1928, is swinging an oar again after a lapse of forty years. Clyde resigned last spring as executive sales manager of the Indiana Flotex Company and is now a gondolier in Venice. '"

I'm looking forward to an action-packed weekend, beginning with a local winter-madness library sale tomorrow morning (I really need some new books for the shop), and ending on Sunday night with episode two of Bleak House.

On an unrelated note, I watched part of 'Love Monkey' the other night on tv. Am I the only one who thinks that these people owe Nick Hornby some royalties? It's all just a little too close to High Fidelity for comfort. One of the characters had a top-five-best songs list - granted, in High Fidelity, they are top-ten lists, but still. I don't know why I watched it. I was tired and my eyes couldn't focus on a printed page, I suspect.

On another unrelated note, Happy 250th Birthday, dear Mozart. I'm listening to your Requiem this morning in the bookshop.