Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

It should come as no surprise to hear that I've taken a long, meandering, circuitous break from reading Montaigne's Essays and now feel sufficiently fortified to return to them and proceed. After receiving a Daedalus remainder order and attending the little library sale last weekend, I found myself with a new stack of temptingly readable books, and over the course of the past week I consumed many of them like bonbons. Or maybe, more to my taste, a bag of kettle chips: Willa Cather's The Professor's House, Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety, the Library of America Poems and Other Writings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a lovely art book entitled In the Gardens of Impressionism by Clare A.P. Willsdon (she quotes Renoir at one point: "'Give me an apple tree in a suburban garden. I haven't the slightest need of Niagara Falls.'"), Andrew Todhunter's A Meal Observed, the Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (read half of it, may read the other half), part of Kurt Vonnegut's political-memoiry-thing A Man Without a Country, and most of The Life and Letters of J. Alden Weir. Whew. Busy reading week. I tend to read much more during the winter than other times of year. This winter looks to be no exception. And everywhere I go, I'm hauling around Montaigne, at the bottom of my tote bag. Heavy old thing. I'm starting to feel quite fond of him.

A good week here. Many books sold. Paid the shop rent a few days early. Onward.