What on earth can I possibly say?

 

I’ve been writing this blog since 2007, and odds are I’ll keep going for the foreseeable future. Why do I do it? 

 

The truth is, Books in Northport does not have a huge readership. None of its posts has ever “gone viral.” Occasionally (and the occasions are rare) someone struck by a certain thought or story of mine here will share a post with a friend or put a link on Facebook, but my readers are more generally content to enjoy for themselves, quietly. Even comments to any particular post are uncommon.

 

And when I look at my stats (which no, I am not going to share publicly, thank you very much), I see that 2017 was the high-water readership mark for this blog. (Six years ago. Should that make me sad?) The statistics give only numbers and a jagged line climbing to a sharp peak before falling again – no indication why more people were reading me in that year than any other. 

What did I write about in 2017? I did a lot of book reviews that year. There were adventures in the Southwest. (But I still do book reviews and recount adventures, when I have any to recount.) There was the launch of Sarah Shoemaker’s novel, Mr. Rochester, a lot of my personal musings (examples here and here), topics literary, historical, social and political pleas (here's an example of that kind of thing), and small personal and local observations here and there, as snippets of my small-town bookselling life dog-paddled furiously to survive in a stormy sea of national chaos. Because that's how I remember 2017 -- as a plunge into national chaos.

Did readers find my questions similar to ones they were asking themselves that year, or were they seeking refuge from disturbing questions in books and in someone else’s life?

 

Because maybe, I’m thinking, it wasn’t my writing or subject matter that caused the spike at all but simply a new kind of chaos that drove more people that year to online forums in general. And now, maybe we have gradually become accustomed to chaos and have given up any attempt either to escape fully or to understand. Maybe recipes and dogs and word puzzles and jigsaw puzzles on Facebook are more tranquilizing, and therefore more appealing, than anything I could possibly write. Whatever!

Numerous suggestions for increasing website audience can be found online, if marketing is your aim or popularity (numbers) your goal. I had a professional group “reach out” to me a few years back, offering to provide more exciting “content” to my blog than I had come up with myself. Unlike the Queen, I was amused, because while my bookstore often appears on this site, as do books, I’m not writing advertising copy. Most simply put, this is my life I'm sharing – certain aspects of it, anyway: books read, travels enjoyed, adventures undertaken, thoughts entertained, questions that plague me, as well as (to steal from Carl Jung) memories, dreams, reflections -- regardless of how many or how few friends or strangers may be interested.

 

Poet Fleda Brown, on her blog, "The Wobbly Bicycle," writes that she has not been writing poems lately but a diary instead, which she approaches as a literary project, in hopes that it will eventually be published. Another writer whose work I admire told me at one point that he felt I had found my “form” in blog posts, and more than one friend (both writers and nonwriters) suggests now and again that Books in Northport could be turned into a book. Is it motivation I lack or energy or something else? Others have done it, so the idea itself is not absurd. -- But a bound volume of my originally digital words without accompanying images (related or unrelated, today's being the latter) and embedded links? It would be, I’m thinking, more hole than cloth.

 

There’s no Big Question here today. No plan for the future. No sudden epiphany. Idle speculation, merely, after four housebound days of clouds and rain and wind and a few snow flurries and a dead car battery, so, as always, take it or leave it. 

Life and Blogs, Their Shapes and Longevity

Long, long ago in Plains, Georgia

There’s nothing like a birthday in the eighth decade of life to set off a reflective mood. Looking through old photographs helps, too, a pastttime I indulged in on the eve of my most recent birthday. “We’ve had an interesting life together,” the Artist had commented in the Emergency Room of the little hospital in Willcox, Arizona, one night in February, and I liked that. Not just “good,” which we both knew and felt it to be – romantic, adventurous, even miraculous -- but definitely “interesting,” as well. And a lot of our shared life found its way into this blog over the past 15 years, which you wouldn’t expect simply from a title like “Books in Northport,” would you? Because the obvious truth is that I haven’t stuck strictly to the subject of books, and I’ve often ranged pretty far from Northport. 

 

My good friend and bookseller colleague Helen Selzer came down to Cochise County, Arizona, this past week so we could celebrate our shared birthday together for the first time, and in the course of our roaming over Arizona roads and all manner of conversational topics, I told Helen yet again that I wished she would resume writing her blog, “Books Books Books.” It was so good! (See for yourself!) Her blog posts included film and theatre, as well as books, and occasionally personal and/or family news crept in, but when she got personal, the personal was always connected to a book or film or theatre topic. That was her focus – books, film, and theatre -- and she feels it wouldn’t make sense to resume the blog without that focus.  

 

Yet here sit I, two thousand miles from Northport, writing about grief and puppies on a blog titled “Books in Northport.” “What’s up with that?” as the younger generation likes to ask. (Do they still say that? Should I say “one of the younger generations”?) And what, if anything, do I make of the revelation that my posts on book topics (e.g., “Banning, Protecting, Supporting, and Curating Books”) are not read by nearly as many people as my posts about the Artist -- love of my life -- or even about our dogs? 

Our dogs have all been good travelers.

The first time we left Michigan for an extended winter vacation in Florida, I wondered if I should start and keep a separate blog for my months away from Northport, but my readers persuaded me no such change was necessary, and so, over the years, my blog has ranged as far away as Florida’s Gulf Coast, often to the Upper Peninsula, several times across Michigan to Lake Huron, once to the Yucatan, and in several recent years way down to the Southwest. I find bookstores and buy books along the way, of course, but not every post is a bookish adventure.

 

The filmmaker Errol Morris, once a graduate student in philosophy, failed to achieve his doctoral degree because, his committee members decided, he “lacked focus.” Whenever I feel this failing in myself – I should say, whenever it occurs to me that being interested in almost everything might be a failing – I think of Errol Morris and take heart. And did he fail to achieve the doctorate? Or did his life’s path branch and enlarge as he traveled it and as his curiosity led him farther and farther from the university library?

 

I am not the toddler I once was in South Dakota, and that little girl was far, far from being the mature woman I am today (or like to think I am). Life is full of the unexpected, and as I’ve said before, the contingent becomes (what feels like) the necessary over time. I did not grow up dreaming of becoming a bookseller. So I’m thinking now that the life of my blog is like the life of a person -- hardly surprising, since it is very much a public record of many aspects of my personal, as well as my business, life -- in that its beginning was one thing, its continuation has been another, and who knows what, if anything, will remain when it ends?

Found, discarded in the northwoods

Which is, I hasten to add, no criticism of my friend, who is also interested in so many things that her life cannot be contained by a blog limited to books, film, and theatre! She’s simply more disciplined about keeping within limits she set out at the beginning. Or, she says to me, I am more disciplined about continuing to write my blog, though it has no more definite shape than an amoeba. (She did not say the amoeba part. I added that myself.) 

 

Anyway, make of this crazy, hodge-podge what you will. To each her own path! I stumble along on mine, fall down once in a while, stagger up again and dust myself off and go on, thankful for my friends and that, different though our paths may be, we have days when we travel together. I am deeply grateful for those times! And grateful for the chance concatenation of events that led to a shared April Fools birthday with Helen. 

Love my new mug! Thank you, Helen!

Postscript: I did not intend my birthday morning breakfast muffins to be an April Fool joke. I intended them to taste as good as they looked. They do look good, don't they? Mixing the cinnamon for the topping with salt instead of sugar was inadvertent. Hint to other bakers: Do not have matching custard cups containing salt and sugar on the counter while you are mixing ingredients.

Appearances deceive here.

Post-Postscript: Because I know I'll never hear the end of it if Sunny does not appear!

Every morning is a Sunny morning!

Sometimes I Am at a Loss for Words

Sarah in Arizona, 2019

Does this ever happen to you? Someone says something, and you’re absolutely dumbstruck? Only by sheer force of will do you keep your jaw from dropping to the floor! A few hours later (or maybe a day or two later), it occurs to you what you might have said, could have said, should have said, but of course the moment (along with many others) has passed.

 

Here’s a question that knocked me sideways the other day. A local woman who follows my blog in the winter and has for years (but hadn’t visited the bookstore since 2016 or earlier) asked me, “Do you write the blog when you’re here, too?” Huh?

 

-- Do I write “Books in Northport” when I’m here in Northport? Do I write about books and my bookstore during the months my bookstore is open for business, the months I’m working fulltime to make a living as an independent bookseller? Astonished, I could only answer, stupidly, “Yes." If you can believe my witlessness, it did not even occur to me to redirect by asking my questioner if she remembered the name of the blog! To be painfully honest, my mind was far too busy dwelling on the absence of any connection made by this winter blog reader between “Books in Northport” and Dog Ears Books. 

Wall behind my bookstore desk, Northport, Michigan

If I had never had a bookstore, I would not have started a blog. If I didn’t still have a bookstore, I might be writing a book by now instead of blog posts. Having at last achieved the dream of seasonal retirement, I write my winter posts from faraway, nowhere near my bookstore in the little village of Northport, but they still fall under the established "Books in Northport" umbrella because, well, this is all still my life, wherever I am. Sometimes I can’t help wondering, though, if people might not like me better when I’m not here! 

 

Book authors can bury themselves in their book-lined studies and close out the world, but booksellers, many (if not most) of us introverts by nature, do not have that luxury. Independent retail booksellers, that is. Booksellers with “Main Street” presences, curated collections, and community commitment. We have to keep putting ourselves out there, blowing our own horns and shaking our money-makers. It's part of the price we pay for being independent, but make no mistake -- it is a price we pay!

 

Crank, crank, crank! Yes, yes, I hear myself! And yes, I know just how it sounds!

 

Don’t worry, I do not wish for some other life. The Artist and I have been very fortunate in being able to make a good life for ourselves doing work we love, and I am deeply, deeply grateful to my loyal customers, locals and visitors, for staying with me all these years! It’s just – and you must have an occasional moment like this, don’t you? – sometimes you kind of want to bang your head against the wall and yell, “What more can I say to get my message across?”

 

Thanks for listening (reading). I feel better. I’m laughing at myself now. You're probably laughing at me, too, and that's okay.

 

Now don’t forget: Saturday is the last day of our 2020 season! And you can continue to follow our pack's adventures here on Books in Northport!!!

Ghost town mountains, Cochise County, Arizona

 

I Miss the Old Days! (A Decade Ago)

Here ensues a lengthy reflection.

Do you, my reader, read with less attention and perhaps even less memory for what you have read? Do you notice when reading on a screen that you are increasingly reading for key words and skimming over the rest? Has this habit or style of screen reading bled over to your reading of hard copy? … Very important, are you less able to find the same enveloping pleasure you once derived from your former reading self?

• Maryanne Wolf, Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

It was in the fall of 2007 that I first began writing “Books in Northport,” and while I have no intention of leaving this writing medium, which I have taken with me far from Northport, to Florida for a few winters and, more recently, now to southeast Arizona, as well as posting after the fact about a trip last January to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, I have to confess that I miss my early days of blogging. 

In those early days, I truly had — not always, but often — the sense of initiating a conversation with some of my posts. Comments from readers let me know that people “out there” were connecting to my words and images. On occasion and over time, often with intriguing blogs of their own that I followed, those who commented became my friends, and once in a while our posts and comments intertwined. One of my readers and someone whose blog I followed was a young woman in China whose parents were young enough that I could have been (in some other life) their parents! Neige (she blogged in French) and I loved our visits to one another’s lives.

In those days, from my yellow leather chair, my morning perch that fall and winter when my dial-up connection was so slow that I kept a book by my side to read while waiting for downsized images to upload, I felt like a world traveler, meeting new people, exploring their worlds, and inviting them into mine. Although we were meeting only in digital space, the leisurely nature of blogs tended to slow and concentrate our online attention. In other words, we spent time with each other.

Priceless!

After a while, though, the snake entered the garden. Two snakes, actually. The first was spam. 

I recall the first spam I got, one I initially (naively) took for a real comment, from a real person, until a friend clued me in. The apparent comment went something like this: “Interesting content. I’ll be back to visit again.” Followed by a link. Ah, yes, those links! There was no person on the other end of what looked like a comment, but only a roaming “bot”-snake, planting links wherever it could slither in, links to lure people in to order flowers online, book cruises, and worse. Ugh! Spam threatened to take the fun out of blogging for me. My solution, suggested by a veteran blogger, was to moderate comments. 

Rather than allowing anyone to leave a comment that would appear instantly, as soon as someone (or something) on the other end posted it, I changed my blog settings so that I received notification when a comment was left, and then it was up to me to publish, delete, or mark as spam. For a while, the solution seemed to work okay for most of my readers, though right from the start some were confused by no longer seeing their comments immediately, with the result that they might leave the same comment three times and then e-mail me to say they were unable to post. It was a period of adjustment for us all.

But that was only Phase 1 of problems with moderation. 

Phase 2 developed when the platform upped the ante for people wanting to comment, requiring a Google password and insisting that people wanting to join the conversation jump through visual hoops to prove “I am not a robot.” Good friends told me they tried and tried and finally gave up. 

(At the end of this post, I will come back to address the comment-moderation problem, but the end is — sigh! my poor, patient reader, if you exist at all out there in digital space! — still still quite a way down the line.) 

Need for moderation and problems readers had with moderation: that was the first snake. The second snake was Facebook — and this connects to my opening quote from Reader, Come Home, written a Tufts University professor and researcher whose expertise is in the cognitive neuroscience of reading. Here is a passage from the beginning of her book:

…[W]hen I was a child learning to read, I did not think about reading. Like Alice, I simply jumped down reading’s hole into Wonderland and disappeared for most of my childhood. When I was a young woman, I did not think about reading. I simply became Elizabeth Bennett, Dorothea Brooke, and Isabel Archer at every opportunity. Sometimes I became men like Alyosha Karamazov, Hans Castorp, and Holden Caulfield. But always I was lifted to places very far from the little town of Eldorado, Illinois, and always I burned with emotions I could never otherwise have imagined. 

When I read the blog of the young woman in China or that of the older woman up in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, or even those by someone in the U.P. or right in my own Leelanau County, I too was “lifted to places very far” from my own  old farmhouse. You might think that Facebook does the same thing, since there I can see friends’ posts from all over the world, but while I appreciate those picture windows on distant places, I don’t feel as if I am entering those worlds. The depth isn’t there, and there isn’t time, because one person’s set of photographs from a Caribbean island is only one set in an endless “news feed.” They are postcards rather than letters. As I see it, not every form of online reading and writing is “the same,” any more than any writing that ends up in a physical book to be read is like the content of any other book. Some speed us up, others slow us down.

Facebook relates to the world of blogging not only because both are online, but also because I am not the only blogger who posts links to my blog on Facebook, hoping to bring in readers who would otherwise not seek me out in the longer, more leisurely medium. The results? Not always what I’d hoped. 

Some very good friends, real friends, people I know and even love in my face-to-face world, tell me they have “no time to read blogs.” When I hear that from someone trying to limit his or her online time in general, I understand it better than when the same apologetic excuse — and believe me, no excuse is ever necessary! My blog is there for anyone interested in my world and thoughts, but it is not required reading for anyone! — comes from someone who seems to be, when I do my once-a-day check-in, on Facebook 24/7. Their phones they have always with them! Notifications come with sound alerts whenever a friend posts, and it takes only a moment to “like” or leave a few words of comment on Facebook. To follow a link, on the other hand, and to read an entire newspaper or magazine article or essay or blog post, makes a deeper and lengthier demand. 

And so it happens that most Facebook friends scroll past my links. An altruistic few may “like” or leave a comment based on the link’s image but without following the link to read the blog post. Fewer still are moved to follow the link and read what has sometimes (not always, I admit) taken me quite a while to put together carefully and thoughtfully, occasionally revising over a few days before posting — and I am grateful to everyone who does so! But here the first snake circles back with his poisonous bite, because those readers are the ones most likely to want to leave comments and also most likely to be stymied by moderation roadblocks! Curses!

Cottonwood in Willcox, AZ, a week ago

My meandering, desultory blog suits my musing philosopher’s mind, and I have no desire to leave the slow lane that is my preferred world: books in print — real books! — and reading silently or aloud those books in print; lengthy, thoughtful, exploratory blog posts; walks in woods or fields or deserts with my dog; face-to-face, side-by-side conversations with the Artist and our friends and family; exploring the larger world in search of horses and wildlife, mountains and lakes; thinking about and exploring, also, day to day, my thoughts and those of others, wherever encountered. In short, I do not want my mind to transform itself into a grasshopper, unable to concentrate, impatient with silence, too impatient to follow a complicated narrative or argument!

But I feel bad about restricting the conversation and keeping others out. That’s another problem with Facebook, too, by the way: what’s posted there becomes a conversation among people who have already designated each other as friends. What about potential friends, such as those I met in my first years of blogging? 

Well, so here is my experiment for the beginning of the new year. I am going to change my settings back to eliminate moderation of comments. That should also (I hope) eliminate hassles. I hope so, anyway. Results of the experiment will decide how long I decide to forego moderation. If no one comments — or if there is a tsunami of spam — I may just heave a sigh and concede failure. But let’s try it, eh? 

Now, for starters, has anyone else read Maryanne Wolf’s book or anything else on the subject of how digital reading is changing our brains and our reading habits in general? How many books do you read, how many print news articles, and how much time to you spend reading online? How did you answer Wolf’s questions at the top of this post? Do you worry about the time your children or grandchildren or students are spending on digital media? And what else would you like to read about here on “Books in Northport”? Suggestions welcome.

Happy new year, friends! May peace, health, and happiness be yours!

To Replace or Re-Invent Myself, That Is the Question

We were all younger once.

One day this past September I received an unsolicited e-mail offer that I read with very mixed feelings. I’ll quote the bulk of it here verbatim (omitting the company name and link at the end but including a few editorial comments) so you can see what I mean:

Pamela - If you’re not 100% happy with your blog, you may want to consider trying a new writer!  

The key is to find a great writer that [sic] also has a deep understanding of your industry [!] 

The problem is, finding these writers [now we are looking for more than one?] can be a real challenge.  

To solve this problem, we use our award-winning _____ platform [I omit the name here, as it is no doubt trademarked) to search over 70,000 pro [sic] writers to find a handful of writers that [sic] we think will be a good match for your specific needs. Then, we have each writer write you [awk] the same sample article (title of your choosing).  

This makes it super easy [ugh!] for you to see which writer you like the best. 

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, just click below to schedule a time so we can talk.

Interesting, eh? Here’s some of what raced through my brain in response: 

Why would I not be happy with my blog? Should I be unhappy with it? Is the sender implying that the writing is substandard? There are certainly writers in the world more talented than I am, but I doubt they want to work for me without compensation! Because I can’t afford to pay a writer to write for me, and I can’t afford to hire a company to find a writer to write for me!

And let me just say that I am repelled by the term “industry” applied to the world of books! Anyone who (who, not that) would apply the term “industry” to the world of writers and publishers and booksellers would probably also refer to the books in my store as “product.” 

Finally, who among these 70,000 “pro” writers for hire knows my life and the books I read and stock and my bookstore better than I do? My blog is not about some abstract “industry,” but about my very personal world!

Lest you think, however, that I was sputtering in outrage over this e-mail, I assure you I was more amused than offended. Did a “pro” writer compose the e-mail? My inner editor (who always slumbers lightly with one eye open) would have taken “that” out of “writers that we think would be a good match” and maybe moved “that” up to the previous one-sentence paragraph, using it place of the awkward comma, and that “super easy” claim did not impress me, either. Overall, I found the entire message uninspired and uninspiring.

Okay, I understand it was a sales pitch. But the message I received (besides envisioning a writer reaching way over her head) was that the sender had not spent any time at all reading my blog before trying to sell me her (I’ll use the detested word here) product. Know thyself and know thy market!

On the other hand, I’m sympathetic, I really am. It’s a dog-eat-dog world [No offense, Sarah!], and everyone is seeking an audience, making a pitch, feeling around for a footing and a handhold — in short, trying to survive. And I’m no different. I’m just (and this is probably my Achilles heel rather than any excellence of character) not single-minded about it. My little stories and snippets, travelogues, tirades, and vignettes are all offered at the same price I am paid to write them, and if they help my Dog Ears Books business in any way, so much the better. If not, I’ve had the pleasure of the writing and the occasional pleasure of a kind and/or thoughtful word in response.

Self-invention and self-promotion are touted as what we should all be about these days, and as wages race to an ever-lower and lower global “bottom” (for those jobs not yet lost to drones and robots), there are more and more people of all ages trying to figure out their next moves. I give a lot of thought to the question myself. What next? What if I’ve nearly run out my string with this bookselling gig? 

One thing is sure. I won’t be hiring anyone else to do my writing for me. So if you’re not satisfied with what you find on Books in Northport, you'll have to look elsewhere. At least you’ll have no trouble finding (here comes another buzz word I despise) “content” all over the place. It’s a big, wide, wonderful world out there, and, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s overflowing with words.

1600

Morning light shimmers on Grand Traverse Bay

In the year 1600, Elizabeth I was queen of England, and James VI the king of Scotland. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” was (probably) performed onstage for the first time.

That isn't snow -- it's cherry trees in blossom

In Japan, Ieyasu set up as “unquestioned ruler” and was advised on shipbuilding by navigator William Adams of England (see The Timetables of History). Rubens was at work in Italy, and Giordana Bruno was burned as a heretic in Rome. The magic lantern was invented (by Athanasius Kircher) and the London East India Company founded. Wigs became popular.

Blooms at St. Wenceslaus Church

Today's is the sixteen-hundredth post of Books in Northport, a blog quietly inaugurated in the fall of 2007. Who knew I’d keep at it this long? Kind of like, when I first opened Dog Ears Books in 1993, who know I’d still be selling books in 2016?

Forget-me-nots remind me of friends

Time goes by, one day at a time.

First supper outdoors in 2016

Seasons come and go

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.

Let Us, One and All, Eat Cake!

The Cake Chronicles: Finding Sweet Hope in this Crazy World, by Jayne B. Robinson

Paper, $21.95

Let’s admit up front that doctors, dietitians, and health food gurus are all against cake. Wheat bad, sugar bad, carbs bad! I’m all for fresh salads and vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds myself, but I love this book and can hardly wait to try the recipe for fresh tomato cake with cream cheese frosting! Can you believe it? Carrot cake, move over! I also want to make the almond semolina cake, “dense and not too sweet and good for brunch or dinner.” And Irish buttermilk bannock for the Feast of St. Michael. Mind you, I have very seldom in my life made cakes at all (pies are more my thing, in general), but this book inspires and excites even a hesitant cake baker like me.

Here’s how it starts: When her younger daughter asks if the family can’t have a home-baked cake every week, the busy working mom agrees. Cake night, she thinks, will be good for everyone. Inspiration also comes from another, more surprising source, a novel by Dean Koontz called Life Expectancy, in which a family of bakers take as their motto, “Where there is cake there is hope, and there is always cake.” The Robinson family adopts the motto, also, as every Saturday night that year becomes Cake Night! A year of 52 cakes!

(I was relieved that Robinson did not agree to bake a cake every night of the week for a whole year. Just reading about that would exhaust me.)

Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, and back to Summer is the way Robinson’s year is laid out in the book, with each “chapter,” as it were, beginning with two or three pages setting the scene. One summer entry begins as follows:

This morning there were over 100 Heavenly Blue morning glory blooms on the arbor in my backyard. I paused before heading to work to take a photo just as the morning sun began to light them up on the edges.

Along with morning glories, though, the morning also brings radio news full of rising death toll numbers from Hurricane Katrina, making it a day that “wasn’t Monday” but “felt like it.” I’m not going to recount Jayne’s whole story of that day but simply tell you that she made “New Orleans Blues Chocolate Layer Cake” in the evening (after contributing to relief victims), in honor of the culture and cuisine of the Big Easy.

Disaster in Louisiana, war in the Middle East, World War I, WWII, Colony Collapse Disorder, a diagnosis of MS in the family – in a book of recipes? Yes, because The Cake Chronicles is much more than a cookbook. There is also Girl Scout camp, a grade school science fair, an academic conference or two, and vacations in Ontario and Leelanau County. (Omena rates a mention, I was happy to note.) That's because the author, a Ph.D. biologist, professor and researcher, is also a refreshing and entertaining writer. Renaissance woman! Her personal essays, you begin to realize as you turn the pages (and begin to recognize and think of them as essays), could stand alone without the recipes, at least as easily as the recipes could stand on their own, unaccompanied by stories, but having both together makes this book a very special treat. It’s a window into one woman’s life that takes note of academic work and family, world headlines and intimate, personal, daily details. It is a happy place for the most part -- you'll love visiting -- but has its share of challenge and sorrow, too.

I wanted to cheer when I reached the fall entry telling of Robinson's promotion to full professor, but what she writes about the celebratory cake her daughter baked for the occasion is surprisingly down-to-earth and heart-warming:

Katie’s cake this week is also the first cake I ever made by myself. I found the recipe on the side of the Bisquick box when I was eleven. It’s still there in the same place, a fact that is immensely comforting. It’s the same great comfort I feel knowing that books I haven’t read for decades, as well as books I might never read but hope to read someday, are waiting for me on the shelf at the library.

You see? She’s cake, I’m pie; she’s biology, I’m philosophy – and yet, in so many ways, we’re on the same page. Again, I just love this book! I hope Jayne accepts my loving it and, for that reason, forgives me for quoting from at such length.

Here’s another bit that tugs at my heart, the author reflecting on traditions lost or left behind:

All of the houses built of sand in July and the castles built of gingerbread in December may be gone, but they live on n my memories and those of my daughters. And besides, we can always start new traditions to take the place of old ones.

Ever wish that you could go back to Girl Scout (or Boy Scout) sleepover camp as an adult and enjoy a glass of wine with the evening campfire? What cake would go with that? Homecoming cakes, wedding cakes, cakes for birthdays and for vegan houseguests – all are in this book, along with memorable stories and stories of memories. There are even Michigan cherries and  sandcastles on a Lake Michigan beach, so really now, what more could you ask?

With some of my bookmarks

Note #1: This is the fourteen-hundred-and-first post on Books in Northport! On Sunday I noticed I was at 1400 and could hardly believe it. Time has flown since 2007, and a lot has changed in our little town, but I’m still here, still selling books, and still excited to discover new books and new friends.

Note #2: The Cake Chronicles and today's heading would have been perfect for Bastille Day, but, having missed this year, no way was I going to wait for July 14, 2015!

In Which the Bookseller’s Mind Hops Around Like a Flea

Every time I look at it, Facebook asks what’s on my mind (or, more intrusively, how I’m feeling, but I figure that’s none of Fb’s business), and I imply the question myself in the heading material of this blog, but seldom can the answer be phrased in a pithy, cocktail-party one-liner. Even at the bookstore, focused on business, I find my thoughts going in several different directions, seemingly at once.

Clearly, the bookstore needs a new sign.

Old sign announced bookstore presence

Currently, it's hard to see we're here

See what I mean? That OPEN flag is mine, but does it say bookstore? No. Despite the letters spelling out BOOKS on our door (thanks again to Bill Coohon), the big word LAW right above the door dwarfs our presence. LAW, of course, goes with the word OFFICE, the latter word being above the law office door just next to ours – sigh! -- because ours, you see, is a new door that wasn’t there when the LAW OFFICE sign went up. What can I say? We’re working on it, we’re working on it! Meanwhile, please search us out, because WE ARE HERE!!! WITH BOOKS!!! 

We need more room for gardening, farming, plant, and food books.

Small section of new book offerings

The first new books that Dog Ears ever carried were nature field guides. I’ve always loved them and never had enough used ones to satisfy me or my customers, who often wanted something specific and/or new. I’ve always loved old books on gardening and farming, too, and have been happy to have customers for them. Now with the recent resurgence of interest in homesteading (reminding me of the 1970s), there are also some great new agrarian and urban-agriculture books. So along with reprints of classics, such as William Cobbett’s The American Gardener; Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution; and Louis Bromfield’s Malabar Farm, I’m stocking recent titles by Gene Logsdon and Sharon Astyk; books on raising chickens and keeping bees; Attracting Native Pollinators; The Encyclopedia of Country Living, by Carla Emery; The New Organic Grower, by Eliot Coleman; Ron Parker’s The Sheep Book; Florian Werner’s Cow: A Bovine Biography; and more -- and it isn’t enough to fulfill what I see as one of the missions of Dog Ears Books.

Sometimes I give in to an odd temptation.

There is one new book on the shelf that no one besides me will probably want to read, and though I don’t have time to read it, I may be its purchaser come Labor Day. No, I’m not going to say which one it is.

Ordering the latest Khaled Hosseini book, on the other hand, And the Mountains Echoed, was probably a better move. It’s already a bestseller, nationally and regionally. And I have Mardi Link's new memoir back-ordered, so that will be in soon. 

Why does the queen have two birthdays?

A friend gave me a lovely 2013 calendar, and on the June page I see “Queen’s Birthday (New Zealand)” on June 3 and “Queen’s Birthday (Australia)” on June 10. Isn’t it the same queen? If so (and I can’t imagine otherwise), why is her birthday celebrated one day in New Zealand and a full week later in Australia? Every time I look at the June calendar, the queen’s birthdays fill me with confusion.

And by the way, happy birthday, Big Steve! You and the Queen – in New Zealand, at least – share this special day, so I wish you the very best and suggest you consider wearing a crown.

Also on the calendar –

Poet Mary Ann Samyn will be here June 14, Poet-novelist Mark Yakich on June 28 (time TBA), and St. John’s Eve, June 23, I notice, is on a Sunday this year and is a full moon night. Considering having the Yakich event early in the afternoon rather than right at dinner hour (before Music in the Park). Any thoughts from Out There???

The best book, dog, nature, philosophy, etc. blog in the whole, ever-lovin’ world!!!

Just kidding. Couldn't resist. Thought of using the underlined for a boastful post heading and then having the text say nothing but “Just kidding.” Probably not the best idea I’ve ever had. That, please note, I did resist.

As for the rest –

That (see above) isn’t all that’s on my mind, by a long shot, and you probably wouldn’t want to hear it all, anyway, but if you miss my cranky side, hop on over to one of my other blogs -- or just wait for the next post on Books in Northport, because you never know what direction my thoughts will take -- because I don’t know ahead of time, either. It's spring, after all, on the cusp of summer. Whose mind isn't a little all over the place these days?

Robin stays focused. Me, not so much.