Is Overkill Even Possible?

Spring maples

Everywhere, flowers! High above the ground, the first, faintest blush of red flowers shows in maple tree crowns, challenging notions of where blossoms belong. In this season of burgeoning abundance, I have taken another crazy leap and started a new blog. I plan to be more faithful to it than I have been to my kitchen musings or the abandoned sketches and drawings, however, because this is another blog related to my bookstore.

And because, here’s the thing. The blog you’re reading, Books in Northport, has never been a one-subject forum. As you know, I wander from bookstore and book reviews into philosophy or gardening or local politics or world economics, and I don’t apologize for doing so. Walks in the woods and laundry on the line are as much part of my life as is my bookstore. But now, with the sad demise of Partners Book Distributing, all of us with independent bookstores are going to have to work a lot harder to bring books to our customers’ attention that might otherwise have a hard time finding local readers.

Therefore, Northport Bookstore News! That’s the place where you’ll see just the books, ma’am, just the books. No long essays or diatribes or meanderings far from the bookstore door. No, just -- here’s a new book, and here’s why you should consider buying it. That will be the focus. Books at a glance, as it were.

My first post on Northport Bookstore News features a new regional book. Go check it out! Since it is regional authors and publishers, along with us booksellers, who will most feel the absence of Partners, my new blog is partly an effort to compensate for our mutual loss. Not all titles featured there, however, will be of local or regional interest, and I probably will not stick strictly to new books, either. All I’m promising is to focus on books and not be excessively wordy.

There is a gadget on this blog, up there on the right column, called “Subscribe by e-mail,” and I’ve added that gadget to the new blog, also. If you’re not a subscriber here already, consider subscribing. On the other hand, if you want “just the books, ma’am,” subscribe to the new blog. And, naturally, it won’t hurt my feelings if people choose to subscribe to both.