Don't Throw Out the Baby!

Summer is BUZZING!

I get a little nervous when I see articles about purging our lives of "too much stuff," especially when the "stuff" is books. How much would be lost from the world if “old” books were to disappear! Even among those published in my own lifetime (hardly ancient texts but all too easily discarded without a second thought), I find beautiful stories and important ideas still worth thinking over and through. One striking recent example is a Harper Colophon paperback from 1964, Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Looking online for mention of this title, I see that I’m not the only one to find Boorstin’s 1960s thoughts pertinent in the 21^stcentury: This short article from the Atlantic magazine, 2016, is definitely worth taking time to read, though beware – it may whet your appetite for the book! 

 

On one of my other blogs recently, I wrote of Bruce Catton’s Reflections on the Civil War, a book certain to interest readers of Catton’s many volumes on the Civil War.

 

Then a 20^th-century feminist classic, Woman and Nature, by Susan Griffin, called to me to pick it up. Did I read Woman and Nature decades ago? (This is the new edition.) If so, how could I have forgotten it? Griffin takes us on a breathtaking, gender-focused guided tour through the history of science and society at large, relentlessly pressing forward and at the same time presenting each historical moment (and they tend to be quite gruesome) not only succinctly but also poetically.

 

Boorstin, Catton, Griffin -- these books written decades ago are all worth reading today, even if the item you happen upon, like my copy of Griffin's book, is a paperback with the glued binding so dried out that the pages come out one by one as you turn them.... 

 

Ah, but yes! New books? Lots of those worth reading, too, for every interest and every age group.

And tonight at 7 p.m. at the Willowbrook in Northport, Sarah Shoemaker (author of the acclaimed Mr. Rochester, the Jane Eyre story told from “the other side”) will present her 2022 novel, Children of the Catastrophe. Join us for reading, discussion, and refreshments following the author's talk. 

Sarah's will be available for purchase and to have signed. 

Northport -- the place to be!

What I Say?

Summer roses

Sandhill crane family in their summer life
 

Ah, yes, the great Ray Charles! I’ve said a few things myself, though none as well noted as what Ray Charles has said and sung. I do like the motto I came up with for the 30^th anniversary of Dog Ears Books, though: 

 

DISPROVING THE SKEPTICS FOR 30 YEARS

 

And the banner on my “Northport Bookstore News” blog reads: 

 

“We don’t want your data, 

just your business and your satisfied smiles.” 

 

I’ve seen a lot of satisfied smiles already this summer, and that gives me satisfaction and makes me smile. Win-win!

----

 

What do I have to say today?

 

Well, it’s cherry harvest right now, so please slow down for farm workers on our county roads! Watch out for cyclists, too – they don’t always wear highly visible colors. Also, few cyclists signal turns, so watch out for that, too. I was happy to see the farm worker ahead of me this morning signal his left-hand turn. (My unscientific observation over a few years is that drivers in Cochise County, AZ, are much better about signaling turns and lane changes than Leelanau County, MI, drivers, but Leelanau takes the prize for turning on headlights at dusk and as storms approach. Arizona drivers could do better on that count.)

 

The Summer Author Series sponsored by the Friends of the Library in Northport (Leelanau Township Library) got off to a great start this past Tuesday with Dave Dempsey from Traverse City and a presentation based on his book, Great Lakes for Sale, which inspired many in the audience to look into joining volunteer organizations to help protect Great Lakes waters. Next Tuesday’s event (these are all at the Willowbrook at 7 p.m. this year, remember) will feature Jacob Wheeler’s Angel of the Garbage Dump, a truly inspiring story, and you definitely want to read that book, too. One person can make a very big difference in the world….

On the advice of a retired librarian, I have now stocked, in my new book section for young people, several titles from the “I Survived” series. These books are fictional stories based on historical fact. For readers of mature years, I am pleased to have now in stock a volume of Anne-Marie Oomen’s early essays, titled The Long Fields. – Oh, but so many new and used books have come into my shop in the last week! Inventory changes all the time, so don’t think you’ve seen it all before, just because you were here once.

 

And as always, everything old is new again -- with a vengeance! Look at what Rachel Carson said in 1950: “We live in an age of rising seas.” Really! She goes on later (this is in The Sea Around Us): 

 

You do not have to travel far to find the sea, for the traces of its ancient stands are everywhere about. Though you may be a thousand miles inland, you can easily find reminders that will reconstruct for the eye and ear of the mind the processions of its ghostly wave and the roar of its surf, far back in time.

 

The latest rising of the sea, Carson tells us, began as early as 1930, but it is rare, she says, that such a change is observable and measurable within the human life span. So here is a book written over 70 years ago that is highly pertinent in 2023, and that is only one example from the many books this old and older to be found at Dog Ears Books in Northport.

A January 1904 magazine article and a scrap cut from the Detroit Free Press dated November 19, 1907, both found in an old book, have held me spellbound for several days. The article is about an opera singer with eight children living on a country estate outside Dresden; the newspaper scrap announces a proverb contest with “$3,200 in Prizes.” People over a hundred years ago, raising children, trying to win contests – again, very much like our lives today. 

Life! Not always tidy --

Outside of my bookstore, life is busy, too: harvesting black raspberries for the freezer, where they join strawberries and rhubarb, all destined eventually for the canning jars that await; working and playing with my young dog, morning and evening; planting, transplanting, watering, pruning; cooking up chutney and looking ahead to jam; and, always, reading, reading, reading.

Raspberries have climbed the wisteria trellis.

Sunny enjoys picking raspberries, too.

“How’s your summer going?” As usual, it’s kind of a blur. But a good one.