Time’s Wingèd Chariot

 

She might like to speed me up sometimes.

Excitement in Northport

 

“Have things pretty much slowed down now?” people frequently ask in my shop. Good question. There are slow hours now, even the occasional slow day, but time’s general pace continues inexorable for the busy small town bookseller, homeowner, and dog mom. One day there were leaves to rake, the next day snow to shovel! One day it was Halloween, and then—it seemed suddenly—the long-anticipated author event of November, Chuck Collins with his latest book, right there in little Northport!

Author and bookseller

There’s no way to make a room larger than it is, try as one might, so with thirty chairs set up and more than forty people eager to hear the speaker, a group of us crowded around the doorway between bookshop and gallery. Author Chuck Collins had a lot of bad news to deliver, but he delivered it calmly, as a friend, and he is not at all a gloom-and-doom kind of guy. He does not counsel despair. He gave examples of “fixes” that can begin—and in some cases, are already underway—at the grassroots level to return power to the people. The audience was fully engaged.

Author and SRO crowd

One of his more obvious illustrations of bad news was how, after a couple of decades in which wages rose in concert with productivity, the economy continued to grow while wages stagnated, this wealth gap fueling a social divide. But in the midst of this discouraging talk, almost as a throwaway line, when citing some positive examples of what can be done, he used a phrase that sang out to me: “reweaving the social fabric,” words seemed to sum up the import of how the gap, having been widened, can be narrowed again. 

We in this country need the feeling again that we are all in it together, that we are all one another’s neighbors, so I am taking my inspiration from Collins’s phrase: Reweaving the social fabric. That is our task. 

Again, Chuck Collins’s new book is Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, and though my stock is currently sold out, I have additional copies back-ordered and will be happy to put names on a waiting list.

For now, I extend many, many thanks to Chuck Collins for graciously coming to Northport to speak at Dog Ears Books! And many, many, many thanks to Northporters who turned out to hear him and to purchase his book and to do me proud! It was certainly an event to remember. I'll add (blowing my own horn as well as the author's) that Chuck’s book tour takes him from little Dog Ears Books in Northport to Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., today! Now what do you think of that?

 

 

The chariot speeds along!

We had our first snow of the season on Sunday, November 9. Glad it was a Sunday (day off), I stayed home all day (no trip to the dog park), alternating work and play outdoors with food preserving tasks indoors. Scenes of snow, however, like those warm-toned autumn leaves, demanded attention, too, and I clicked away on my phone, storing up images as eagerly as I was storing up food. I won’t say I have a million photographs of autumn scenes—let alone a ton (have you noticed how everything seems to be described in tons these days? except when quantities come in bunches?) —but I have so many that it’s difficult to choose from among them. Maybe a couple of contrasting pairs will best give a picture of our Up North world. 

Leaves on my boardwalk

Second clearing of snow from boardwalk in one day

New life from old at a corner of the woods

The same woods corner after first snowfall

There are more (though never enough) over on my photo blog, A Shot in the Light, but maybe I just need to do what is inelegantly called a photo dump over there, eh? Yeah, that’s the idea….

 

 

Jim Harrison, A Life

 

I devoured the biography of Jim Harrison, Devouring Time, by Todd Goddard, and it was a strange, moving experience. Although the Artist and I were not in the inner circle of Jim’s friends in poetry and publishing or hunting and fishing (overlapping groups), much less part of the high-profile Hollywood personality crowd, we spent a fair amount of time with Jim and Linda in Leelanau County in the 1970s and ‘80s. When I first met the Artist, in fact, he had just returned from Key West, from the shooting of “Ninety-Two in the Shade” and from having been in Jimmy Buffett’s apartment when the first pressing of “A Pirate Looks at 40” arrived (40? Wow! That seems so young to me now!), and he had many stories to tell of Buffett and Harrison and McGuane and Kidder and all. Then I began reading Jim’s books. 

 

Eventually the Artist took me to the Writer’s home for our first meeting, and there was a time when I did a spate of manuscript typing for Jim (a poetry collection, a novel, a couple of screenplays), but then the Harrisons moved west, and the last time the four of us were together was in Patagonia, Arizona, in the spring of 2015.

 

As it was, all through the book, as each chapter announces the years covered, I relived my own life, remembering where I was in those years and picking up all the successive threads of love and friendship and acquaintance as time went by, braiding them together and feeling them tug at my heart. I wasn’t even sure I could manage the very last pages of the book. I miss the love of my life, my dear friends, the way we all were! That last spring evening in Patagonia, the Artist asked the Writer's wife, “Do you miss Leelanau County?” She answered, “I miss the way it used to be.” I do, too.

 

Lucky woman!

 

When the Artist and I lived in Kalamazoo, we sometimes fantasized about having a bookstore in Paw Paw. We were always drawn to small towns and country life and always discovering and bringing home used books wherever they found us. It was a long and winding road that brought the two of us together again in Leland, with more books than our little house could hold when, without the benefit of long-term planning, rather as a summer lark, I first fell into bookselling, having no idea that I would be selling books 32 years later, no idea at all of the many adventures and friendships that would enrich those years.

 

When Chuck Collins arrived for his event on Wednesday, one of the first things he wanted to do was to buy the Goddard biography of Harrison. He gave his talk in what is still David Grath's gallery. Later, over dinner, Bobbie Collins reminded me of the images of Grath paintings that grace a series of music CDs her husband Edward J. Collins commissioned, music written by his own father, Edward Joseph Collins, who was born in Joliet, Illinois, the town where I grew up (after my parents moved there from my birth state, South Dakota). 

We had dinner after Chuck’s bookstore talk at the new Bluebird in Leland, only opened recently, where I was touched to see the Dreadnaught on the menu. It was the Artist who “invented” that burger, “the Dreadnaught of our cheeseburger line,” he liked to say—although he always insisted it really should be served on an English muffin, but that’s another matter entirely. My point is that, in the old days, in addition to the Bluebird’s printed menu, there was an unwritten menu of things that could be ordered only if one knew about them, and always, before ordering one of those items, you would ask, “Who’s cooking tonight?” The Dreadnaught was one of those items. Now it's on the printed menu. 

“My husband invented the Dreadnaught,” I told the waiter on Wednesday evening. I didn’t think he had registered my statement (why would he?), but later he came back to ask my husband’s name, and Bobbie Collins said, “He was an artist,” and I said, “You can Google him,” and he, the waiter, said, “I will.”

 

Is that a pointless story? Not to me. To me, it all ties together, because it's all part of my life, and when an old friend of the Collins family who had joined us for dinner told a story about Fred and Molly Petroskey, that tied in, too. All those nights around a big table at the old Bluebird, all those old “regulars” now dispersed or even gone from earth—they all still live in my memory, and Chuck and Mary are now woven permanently into the fabric of my life, too, along with Bobbie, who was already there.

 

Many years ago, my son once complained that he was “tired of being poor,” and the Artist corrected him. “We’re not poor, we’re just broke. We have a very rich life.” Our life together grew richer and richer in later years, in ways so much more meaningful than money! My memories are “savings” that I live on each and every day, and yet the wealth does not diminish. 

Of course there is Sunny Juliet, too.

Sometimes an apple is a plaything.

Sometimes it's a snack.

Friday was a blue sky day, and after closing shop at 3 o’clock I hurried home to my girl. “Go for a walk?” I asked her. “It’s a beautiful day, and we’re alive!” How many times did the Artist say that to me? We had so many beautiful days!

The world is still beautiful.

It is rich in color and memory.

And it keeps on turning....

Postscript: Friday sunset

It’s NOT All About Me

Ruby red osiers (red-twig dogwood)

It’s hard to remember that only 10 weeks ago, the American economy was quite good, our foreign relations were on the whole positive, we were on the way to dealing with climate change with subsidies for wind and solar energy, and we still lived in a democracy.

So began Robert Reich’s April 7, 2025, Substack post. It’s true he doesn’t mention what was happening in Gaza ten weeks ago—that wasn’t good news—but it’s hard to argue with what he does say about our world ten weeks ago. 

And now? Barbarians running amok throughout the federal government at all levels, slashing and burning, wreaking retribution wherever possible on particular states, universities, law firms, judges, and anyone else who has dared to stand for the rule of law against the lawless, monolithic attack, and now punitive tariffs on everyone from China to penguins. What can one little bookseller in a small, quiet village possibly hope to say to draw attention away from the national scene and toward her own small interests? 

Does she look dubious?

But I don’t want to divert your attention from the national scene! I want you to pay attention to it. If I include photographs of my dog now and then or images of beauty found in my country neighborhood to give you a reason to smile, that’s not because dogs and scenery are more important than imminent threats to our democracy (as well as our livelihoods) but simply because we need to remember, in the midst of chaos and horror and destruction, that our world, the basic reality being so egregiously attacked, has an essential goodness. 

As for why I include snippets of big news here that you can easily find elsewhere in far greater detail, it’s because I hope that at least one or two people who depend on (dis)information silos to guide their thinking—I cannot stop hoping—will find something I say, some random link I include, if not their stock portfolios tanking, a serious challenge to their ”God’s got this” complacency, because I know that many of them have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as do I, and surely they don’t want our country destroyed before those younger generations have a chance to enjoy a good American life. 

How many people do you know who are downsizing households and reducing material belongings so “the kids won’t have to deal with a mess” when they’re gone? Well, how about a country without respect for the Constitution, without freedom of expression, a country loathed by the rest of the world for not keeping its word? What parents want to see their kids having to deal with a mess like that? 

The Secretary of the Treasury (another billionaire—surprise!) does not think (my sentence should really end there, shouldn't it?) that ordinary Americans facing retirement “look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening” in the stock market. He thinks they don't pay attention to the market, which is somewhat like (although not quite as bad as) the Secretary of Commerce saying that only fraudsters complain about not getting their social security checks on time. What planet do these idiots live on?

Mr. Bessent, sir, Americans preparing to retire are paying more attention to financial indicators than you realize. And Mr. Lutnick, sir, your mother-in-law may not worry if her social security check doesn’t arrive on time, but many Americans rely on those checks to pay their rent. How out of touch with your fellow Americans can you possibly be? 

I’m thinking that right about now, with Social Security threatened and world trade in crisis, Americans who didn’t worry about international students or undocumented aliens being kidnapped without grounds for arrest and without any semblance of a trial—those Americans might be getting a little nervous now that their pocketbooks are threatened. People who were perfectly comfortable with nonstop lies, fear-mongering, and violations of the United States Constitution might not be quite so comfortable with value erased overnight from their own stock portfolios and retirement funds.

Many of us have long wondered what it would take, and maybe this is what it takes. Cart our immigrant neighbors off to prison in El Salvador; cut off funding and trash years of research into serious health issues; make the United States a pariah among nations—but my stock portfolio? My money? You’re messing with my money?! 

Yeah, well, if that’s what it takes, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their pocketbooks. If that’s what it takes for people to start paying attention to the Constitution, now is the time to wake up!

As for what inspired the absurd tariff plan that has the stock market in freefall, the true story would not be believed if it were written in a novel. The actual fiction writer may be offstage for a while (we can only hope), but for now the damage has been done. We’re told it will be GREAT “in the long run.” In the long run, of course, all of us will be dead, and our poor grandchildren will be left to put together whatever pieces of freedom might be left.

This is what happens, friends, when experience, knowledge, and solid background are considered as disqualifications for the highest positions in government. Take a look at the Cabinet and the advisors to the president. Just take a look. The rest of the world is looking on with horror!

Meanwhile, in my little corner of the big world, more snow arrived on Monday and a dear friend died. Time is inexorable. Larry Coppard, we will miss you in Northport, and your absence will be felt far from our village, as well, because a good man is hard to find and heartbreaking to lose. But every life well lived is an inspiration to others, and so the good life Larry lived will continue to light our hearts and our way forward.

The Artist called his dear friend Larry "Lorenzo"!

These are the things that matter: dear friends and family, principled human beings, the reassuring cycles of Nature, art and literature and music and memory and all the ways our souls live on past the body’s return to earth. 

The dogs bark, the caravan moves on. In other words, tyrants come and go, but love remains.

A David Grath sky --

Postscript 4/10. Nope. I’m not done. Do you know what the president’s golf outings cost taxpayers? Do you know that the new 100% unqualified assistant director of the FBI, a big “strongman” podcaster, apparently needs a 24-hour, 20-man security team, no matter where he is or what he is doing? (Those guys don’t work for free.) Do you know that the Secretary of the Interior, at the same time that park rangers are being fired across the United States, has paid aides baking cookies for him on demand, because he has to have them warm? 

Oh, right! It’s all about cutting costs, trimming waste, making government more efficient. You believe that?  This, friends, is how autocrats rule: Living like pashas, they take from the people and give to themselves.

Direct From Paris!

Somewhere along life's road, we paused.

Do you need a vacation from the tense present? Come with me to the past nearly perfect, and from there we will circle back to a recent day of happiness for me in Northport. 

 

Most Americans, whether they have been able to make the dream come true or not, have a dream city. For some it is Manhattan or San Francisco, for others London or Rome. For me, all my life, it was always Paris. It had certainly been that for my father, who was there in the intoxicating days following the Liberation and who had a chance to see and hear Edith Piaf, the “little sparrow,” in person one evening. And for the Artist—well, how many artists from all over the world, through the years, have sought refuge and validation in Paris? 

 

So Paris was a dream we shared from the beginning. As it turned out, however, each of us made our first trip solo, which was as important for me as it was for him. When I went for the month of May in 1987, it was because so much else in my life had fallen apart that I needed to save at least one important dream. I didn’t want to speak English at all during my weeks in Paris and avoided situations to do so. For me, it was a personal test. When the Artist went for three weeks in April of 1992, it was a different kind of test for him. He needed to make his way around independently with only smatterings of the language. 

My beautiful room!

Complete with a cat named Sirius!

Both of us succeeded, and we made important friends, as well, during our solo times in Paris. The older Frenchwoman from whom I rented a room on the rue de Vaugirard became one of the best friends of my life, and the young Englishman he met became an important friend to the Artist. We dreamed of having these two visit us in the U.S. so we could show them our country. That dream was never realized, but in September of 2000, when the Artist and I finally went to Paris together, it was natural that we would introduce our two dear friends to each other. 

Justin and Hélène as she shows some of the art on her walls

What an enchanted, unforgettable evening that was! Drinks and hors d’oevres at Hélène’s apartment, followed by dinner at a little Auvergnat restaurant in the neighborhood! “We are making beautiful memories!” Hélène said to me, resting her head on my shoulder. She did not speak English any more than the Artist spoke French, but to my great delight they “got” each other without a common language. Of course! 

 

I had chosen our hotel, le Recamier, in part because of its proximity to Hélène’s apartment, my first “home” in Paris, but the peacefulness of the Place with its fountain of the Four Cardinals (and the four cardinal directions), the church of St.-Sulpice with its grand organ, and the bookshops nearby all added their own charms. 

After an exciting but somehow leisurely Paris sojourn, we took the train of grande vitesse south to Avignon, picked up a rental car, and wandered north. We had maps but no reservations, simply exploring as the spirit moved us—and by great good fortune happening upon the village of Blesle, which I will never, never forget. 

We always talked of a return. We wanted to go back to Paris, to see Justin and Hélène again, to visit places we hadn’t had time to see, and maybe spend an entire week in Blesle, seeking out the treasures of the Auvergne. But it was not to be. We never gave up the idea, but time ran out on us. 

 

So imagine the thrill I felt when an email came from the publishing house of Gallimard in Paris, saying they were putting together a new volume of some of Jim Harrison’s work in French translation and that the translator had discovered a couple of screenplay treatments, never sold, that the Artist and the Writer had cowritten back in the 1970s—and would I give permission for translations of those two pieces, with credit given to David Grath, to be included in the volume?!

 

But of course!!!

 

There followed months of emails back and forth between Paris, France, and Northport, Michigan. The flood of forms seemed to multiply overnight like wire coat hangers in the closet of an old farmhouse. (Do I know about that, or do I know about that?) It was international business, there was an advance on royalties involved, etc., etc. About the time I was ready to give up and tell them “Forget the royalties! Just make sure the pieces get into the book!” I was assured that the last form requested would be the final one required and that when the book was published in November 2024 a copy would be sent to me. 

 

Publication timelines are often subject to alteration, so I was not surprised to learn that Métamorphoses would not be released until January 2025. It had been so long since the initial email that for days, even weeks at a time, I would forget about the book completely. Last week, then, when I had a yellow slip to pick up a package at the post office, the contents took me completely by surprise.

Identifying name on package

 

Contents of package

The two screenplay treatments are near the end of the book in a section called “Unedited texts,” and the Artist’s name is in small type in a footnote at the bottom of the first page of the first screenplay (this is, after all, a work of the revered Jim Harrison), but I remember how absolutely thrilled David had been, on his first visit to France, to see the Bob James album, “Grand Piano Canyon,” in a shop in Paris with the image of his painting of the same name on the album cover, so I can easily imagine how pleased he would be to have the collaborative work he did with his friend Jim in a book issued by the one of France’s leading publishers, which is the reason I jumped through that seemingly endless series of bureaucratic hoops—not for money but for love. And there you have it. That's my story.

 

Which brings us back to northern Michigan, on a cold January day, in a turbulent and disturbing moment in American history, but I promised myself and my readers a vacation in today’s post and am not about to renege on my promise. So, some more happy news? There was practically no wind this morning! What joy for the momma and her girl when they went out for their first walk of the day! A perfect morning for chasing chunks of icy snow and slipping and sliding in the process! What fun!

From the Fringes -- Grateful

At some point in the life of this blog – and I can’t tell you the exact date when it began – I began to refer to him as “the Artist” rather than as “my husband” or by name, following a kind of minor tradition among bloggers, who often use first-letter capitalized common nouns to stand in for the names of steady partners who play a part in their stories. My point today is that until he died in early March 2022, I was married to an artist whom I called the Artist, because in my life he was the one who counted.

 

His studio and gallery, in the same building as my bookstore, had a separate entrance, but a doorless doorway connected my bookstore to his space. Nevertheless, on busy summer days, with people coming and going for hours through our respective domains, both of us living days brimful of talk and laughter with friends and strangers, along with sales of books and paintings, we might not see each other until day’s end, when at last we had time to share accounts of what had transpired in our side-by-side but separate realms. Both in those physical spaces and in our lives beyond Waukazoo Street, his art world and my book world intersected and overlapped and enriched our life together year after year. In this bookstore blog I called him the Artist. His name was David Grath.

 

The late years of our winter life (“seasonal retirement”), from 2016 to 2021, were different from summers in a Michigan tourist region. In a small rental cabin in a ghost town in the mountains of southeast Arizona we lived, as he described it to friends, “joined at the hip,” or, “in each other’s pockets.” Each of us had a corner of the cabin for reading and writing and thinking. Beyond that, the kitchen area was pretty much mine to arrange and reign over, while he was guardian and ruler of the television (with an antenna on the roof, several stations came in clearly) and DVD player, their remote controls a complete mystery to me, but we were within physical reach of each other more often than not. 

Early days in Arizona ...

... when our spaces were yet spare.

Summers, we drove separate cars to work. Having me on hand next door to answer questions of visitors to his gallery, he was free to take leave whenever the spirit moved him – to visit artist friends in their studios; to take the slow “county cruises” he loved, soaking in the landscape for future work; to attend to little jobs that needed doing back at home. My summer days were spent on Waukazoo Street; his were there and elsewhere. 

Out on the town -- Willcox, AZ

Again, Arizona winters were different. With a single car between us, it was a rare day when one left the cabin without the other. Instead, almost always, after I returned from a long morning ramble on foot with one dog or the other (we only ever had one at a time, but two figured in those years of cabin life), he and I, usually with dog, would set out on the road, armed with water and snacks, books and notebooks and sketchpads. We might have a destination in mind when we left home base, but those days were always revisable, each one an improvisation. There were forays up to Tucson or into Santa Cruz County to see friends, as well as expeditions north to Safford on a favorite mountain road; the majority of our explorations, however, took place in Cochise County, our home base. The second year I worried that it would be old hat for the Artist, no longer an adventure, that he--not in love with Cochise County as I was--would find our surroundings boring. One winter after another went by, though, and we never exhausted the possibilities. Never got to Ramsey Canyon or King Ranch, for instance. Besides revisiting favorite places more than once (Faraway Ranch, for instance, in the Chiricahua National Monument; Turkey Creek Road; Whitewater Draw), we kept discovering unfamiliar and exciting places easily reached on day trips: a shortcut across the Sulphur Springs Valley or a back road to Bisbee, a new coffee house or junk shop or shady stretches of the San Pedro River that held running water.

Of course, our life together had not always been divided between Michigan and Arizona. Years earlier, before and following a spate of Florida winters (Weeki Wachee first, then Aripeka), we had stayed put, first in Leland, later in our old farmhouse between Leland and Northport. One year, snowed in for a week in Leland, we would walk “downtown” every day: Main Street, only two blocks from our house, had everything we needed--post office, bank, the Early Bird for coffee, the Merc for groceries, and the library on the other side of the bridge. Earlier still had been the Kalamazoo years. After we moved to the Leelanau Township farmhouse in 2001, winter was more challenging, but we still managed even when the power was out – once for four days. Our stove and fireplace worked on propane, and we had candles and oil lamps. “This is how old Joe and his wife lived,” he observed one of those cold, snowy evenings. Winters meant adventure at home.

 

But life with the Artist had always been an adventure. Short on money in Kalamazoo (“I’m tired of being poor,” my son complained, and my husband told him, “We’re not poor, we’re just broke”), we visited flea markets and thrift shops and had wonderful, far-ranging conversations over endless cups of coffee, our untethered imaginations reaching far beyond our physical surroundings. For every day of life constrained by finances, we had years of dream lives in which we created a combination tea shop and bookstore in Kalamazoo; raised shallots and rabbits in Leelanau County; lived part-time in Montreal; and furnished a pied-à-terre in Paris with finds from the Marché aux Puces de St.-Ouen. We never stayed in the cheapest U.P. or Wisconsin motel room without redesigning and refurnishing it in our combined imaginations, in case we were ever “on the lam” (don’t ask me for what!) and had to live in that one room. We “wrote” screenplays during car trips or, again, over coffee – that is, talked our way through the films as we invented them, committing nothing to paper but having a wonderful time envisioning the development of our stories on the big screen.

 

The artist’s life is not an easy one, nor is the bookseller’s life a road to riches, but the two of us were never in it for the money. For years I carried in my purse a tiny strip of paper from a fortune cookie (opened in spring of 1987) that read, “Your path is arduous but will be amply rewarded.” A forecast fulfilled: My path has been amply rewarded. (And yes, there were also arduous times.) My love and I made a rich life together, and my life alone continues to be enriched by what he brought to it, as chance encounters reveal more and more memorable stories people share with me about conversations they remember having with David. He had a gift for making memorable moments and hours.

 

Harlan Hubbard wrote of his life with Anna that they lived “on the fringe of society.” While Grath life cannot be compared to Hubbard life, in many ways ours also was lived on the fringes. Michigan, after all, is not either Coast. (“By the time an idea gets here from one of the Coasts, it’s worn so thin you can see right through it.” Someone I know quoted that to me. I have no idea who said it first.) My artist husband was not shy about saying that he wanted to create beautiful work. (To make art that shocked was never his aim.) I have written no books but have been faithful to this modest blog since fall of 2007. Far from the world’s power centers of art and commerce, we pursued work that felt valuable to us.

 

Well, now comes an unexpected postscript to the Artist’s life: The French translator of Jim Harrison’s work has unearthed two screenplay treatments, written in 1977, by David Grath & Jim Harrison, and the English pages have been translated and will appear in a new “omnibus” edition of Jim’s work from an imprint of Éditions Gallimard in Paris, the tentative release date November 2024. How thrilled the Artist would be! He had such a good time writing those treatments with Jim (neither ever sold, let alone produced), and to think they will be in a book published in Paris – he would be over the moon!

 

So that’s my news from Northport today. – No, one more piece of news, this one very local: Not only on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but every Saturday in December, from 3 to 6 p.m., there will be horse-drawn wagon rides through the village. The horses are Clydesdales, the wagon bright red and festively decorated, so December Saturdays in Northport will be wonderful days for residents and visitors alike.

 

And yet one more (last?) note. I’ve been writing Books in Northport since September 2007. If you enjoyed this post and have friends who might appreciate it, also, please share a link. Comments here are always welcome, too. Thank you for your support – for my blog and for my bookstore!

 

And Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Window on Waukazoo Street

A Dog in a Paris Bookshop

W  O  R  D

 

Sometimes I play around with possible book titles. Certain words, I find, have an irresistible quality to them, bait on hooks we can hardly keep ourselves from biting. A few such are:

 

    light

    sun

    journey

    path

    road

    sea

    ocean

    river

    lake

    woods

    forest

    mountain(s)

    desert

    city

    village

    country

    west

    north

    south

    way

 

East of Eden, okay, but is ‘east’ an irresistible word? Does it have romance in it? What do you think? Anyway, you see what I mean about magic words?

 

Numerous new releases and fairly recent book titles feature other words that have magic for many of us, telling me I am certainly not alone in being drawn in by them. I've noticed a lot of books with these words in their titles:

 

    Paris*

    dog

    bookshop

 

Hence the title for today’s post, because – well, didn’t it draw you in? I don’t know of anyone who has used this exact title, but I offer it to anyone ready to write the book, and my plea has an addendum: You must, please, include lots of details about Paris and the bookshop and the dog, because as lovers of Paris and dogs and bookshops (please let there be used books, and let the dog be of mature years!), we your readers want a generous literary getaway and can never have too much of what we love.

 

(*Two of my all-time favorite books set in Paris are nonfiction, and neither one is new. Elliott Paul’s The Last Time I Saw Paris tells of his time on the tiny Rue de la Huchette in the years leading up to World War II, while Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon, essays originally published in the New Yorker magazine not all long ago--in my sense of time--, introduce the reader to places and experiences that few tourists would uncover for themselves. Both these books give a quirky alien insider’s perspective on Paris insolite.) 

So once more I ask: Where, where, where is the Paris bookshop dog story? And could the dog have been Pierre’s dog in another life?

What words are irresistible magic for you in book titles? Because I know my list is only a beginning...

Practical matters: Dog Ears Books is generally open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 to 5, but will close early today (June 8, closing at 2 p.m.) and may have to fudge on a few upcoming Tuesdays, but whenever the bookstore is open, David Grath's gallery next door is also open. It's the 30th anniversary year for the bookstore and the last summer for the gallery, so please don't miss visiting.