How I’m Coping Without My Bookstore

 

My old girl, Sarah, in her younger days

“It’s only temporary!” Loretta (played by Cher) yells at her father when he asks to see her engagement ring and she shows him (as he points out) what is obviously a pinkie ring. 

 

“Everything is temporary”! he yells back.

 

“Moonstruck” is one of my favorite movies, one of those rare films with nary a clinker. Every scene and line is perfect. I think of it as I write this post today because, as you know, my bookstore in northern Michigan is closed while I take my annual seasonal (winter) retirement.

 

The daily “Shelf Awareness” newsletter has had a regularly occurring feature since sometime in 2020, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, called “How Bookstores Are Coping.” The feature tells stories from all over the United States about how supportive customers have been, online orders being received on store websites, tales of curbside delivery; etc. And every day when I read those stories, I feel like a deserter from the front lines, although Dog Ears Books is not closed for the winter because of the pandemic, but only so this aged bookseller can have a respite before taking a deep breath and plunging into another busy season as one of the “working aged” (as another of my still-working friends informs me we are identified). 

Resting on her laurels in old age

Open for business only four months last year when stay-at-home restrictions were eased, I was full of trepidation beforehand, but after another still-working friend helped me out with a professional deep cleaning and I got all my pandemic precautions in place, things went fine. In four months, only two people complained about. having to wear masks (one of them told how to wear it correctly, up over his nose, made a fast exit, and that was okay, too -- his choice). Everyone else was cheerful, and more than one person thanked me for requiring masks and hand sanitizing at the door. 

Sarah with me for her last bookstore season

 

Bookstore people! They are the best!

 

Out here in Arizona in the early winter of 2019-2020, I was happy to arrange a couple of very parttime volunteer gigs for myself. On Monday mornings, at the Friendly Bookstore in Willcox, a venture of the Friends of the Elsie S. Hogan Community Library, and on Wednesday mornings in a program that paired older volunteers with at-risk children in early grades at the local public school, reading with them and having them write stories. I loved that git – the first volunteer job of my life! The children were darling, and naturally I felt right at home in a bookstore. 

 

Then came the stay-at-home order, and everything came to a sliding stop – which is much faster than it sounds. No more reading with little kids at school. No more selling books and honey. No socializing with neighbors, either. 

 

Well, you all know. We were “all in it together,” we were told over and over. Now, almost a year later, we hope the end is in sight, but life is still not back to normal, and the stories of “coping” continue.

 

The first winter the Artist and I came out West, there were three independent bookstores in Benson, just 30-odd miles down the pike from Willcox. The one we frequented most often and always found stacks of books to buy closed when the bookseller decided 25 years in business was long enough. The second, which we belatedly discovered on a back street, was gone without explanation last year. And the owner of the third, way out in the country, on a ranch with donkeys (and yes, a little dog, too), died in late 2020 at the age of 90, after 46 years as a bookseller. 

 

From three indies to none in five years. 

 

So now, unless we want to drive down to Bisbee or all the way to Tucson (where I had discovered the wonderful Book Stop not long before shelter-in-place order hit), neither of which we’ve done so far this season, we’re thrown back on the pot luck of thrift shops and FOL bookstores, which are better than nothing -- and some very nice and friendly and COVID-aware -- but nothing like the curated collection of an indie. And the FOL place in Benson has been closed since the first of the year. 

 

I miss the indies and supporting my fellow indie booksellers, my colleagues. Who knows? Maybe before we leave for Michigan this spring we’ll make it back over to the Book Stop neighborhood in Tucson or down to Meridian Books in Bisbee. I hope so. Because I have not yet abandoned the front lines myself, and it’s important to me to support with my purchases – support that really counts -- others who are out there in this always-risky, always changing business called bookselling. 

 

We indie booksellers all need to make money to stay in business, but we didn’t go into this particular business to get rich. You know why we do it! You wouldn’t be reading “Books in Northport” if you didn’t love books!

Not there now, but I shall return!

Postscript Update, 3/13/2021: The Friends of the Library bookstore in Benson, closed January and February, re-opened March 3, and we made our first visit of the year on March 12. I was delighted to find the volunteer in charge none other than Lenore, retired from the the former Benson bookstore we visited so many times. She was able to tell us that Mary Ann, another of Benson’s booksellers, moved her shop to Apache Junction to be nearer her son. (Mary Ann's and Lenore's former Benson bookshops appear in this old post.) Also, that the heirs of the late Win Bundy, bookseller at Singing Winds bookstore (the one with the donkeys), are trying to figure out how they might re-open. That would be fantastic, as Win's inventory of books on the Southwest was nothing short of mind-boggling.

 

The Pages of Time's Book Keep Turning

[Orig. written 10/4, revised & published 10/6.]

Apple harvest is underway, field corn looks good in the land, and leaves are turning – popples to gold, maples to orange and red, ash to every color from banana-butternut to deep purple. October is here, a month of transition and variability, when any day of any week might steal a march from any other month of the year. What now? What next? In 2020, we ask those questions with more than the usual urgency, not only of the weather and the autumn season but also with respect to COVID-19 and toxic American politics, two parallel pandemics that have converged this week in the nation’s capitol. With more life behind us than ahead of us, the Artist and I wonder what we will see in what time remains to us.

Sunday morning could not have been gloomier: cold, wet, dreary, grey. I forced myself to get up and dressed ... to peel apples ... to cook up a pot of applesauce and get it processed in jars. My other self-assignment for the day was to clean the refrigerator, and I almost cancelled that plan, because -- Who would know? Who would care? But I reminded myself that it takes less time to clean the refrigerator than it does to postpone the job, and after it was done I opened the door a few times to admire my very minor household accomplishment. Sometimes we need to give ourselves positive reinforcement wherever we can find it. I made applesauce! I cleaned the refrigerator! I did not hide my head under the covers all day!

It was a mostly gloomy day, however, certainly not one I'd want to repeat Bill Murray-fashion as Groundhog Day, although that is one of my all-time favorite movies. Could I learn something important by living last Sunday over and over? Maybe "let go" of a friend's comment that disappointed and saddened me? But then, on the other hand, there was a long conversation with another friend, a dear, dear person, and we both felt better after that. [Note to self: call and write to friends more often!]

An inspiring little paperback I read cover to cover over the weekend was Jimmy Carter's Why Not the Best? which takes its title from an encounter young Carter had with Admiral Rickover. Instead of praising the young man for his class standing, the admiral asked if Carter had always done his best, and Carter had to admit that he had not always. "Why not?" the admiral demanded. 

In this 1976 autobiography, Carter writes in detail about his childhood and family, his Navy career, his run for the governorship of Georgia, and finally, as he resolves to make a bid for the presidency, his belief that the American people deserve and will respond to honesty in their political leaders. There is an entire chapter on what was a very crooked election process in part of Georgia and Carter's role in cleaning that up, a volunteer mission he continues around the world to this day, and that was very enlightening, but the thing that impressed me most was how, when he decided to run for elected office -- eventually for the presidency -- he set himself to learn what he would need to know in that office. He read and studied. The energy plan he put forward as president was no half-baked opinion off the top of his head but a comprehensive program carefully formulated after much study and consultation. That is, he took the job of president seriously before he ever ran for the office. He resolved -- I'm saying this; he did not -- to do his best. I think the title of his book was meant to ask why Americans should not demand the best of everyone in government -- and of ourselves.

Carter is often called, by those who find his presidency unimpressive, our best former president. I think history will look upon him more favorably. I make no secret of my admiration for him. 

A black woman being interviewed on the radio (and I'm sorry I did not make a note of her name) referred to "the two pandemics" we are dealing with in the United States right now, and I borrowed her idea for my opening paragraph today. As difficult as it is living with sensible COVID-19 social restrictions, to me the obvious fact that we are not "united" on that or any other question right now feels far worse. Hateful bellows or smirking, snide remarks: neither helps anyone feel better. The friend whose comment knocked me sideways on Sunday thinks I'm too generous in my thoughts and should instead wish bad things on those whose politics and social practices I abhor. Oh, friend, do you think it comes easily to me, not wishing evil on evil-doers, trying not to hate? You little realize how hard I struggle, on a daily basis -- an hourly basis! My sense of outrage is no less keen than yours! And I do hate -- do truly hate -- all appeals to our baser natures and all encouragement to hate! Does that sound like a contradiction?

When it comes right down to it, though, most of us are conservative on some questions and liberal on others. On certain complex issues we may not have reached a settled position but are still trying to sort out everything involved. And that I don’t see as a contradiction. Computer algorithms can afford to be purely rule-driven, because the world of a computer program is limited from the outset, each program modeling a piece or an aspect of the larger world for some specific purpose. Real life is more complicated, because nothing in our many-colored world is left out! 

Moreover, human beings live in a world of contingency. We find ourselves in some situations as a result result of our own prior choices, it’s true, but many situations result from choices other people have made or even from natural processes we could not have foreseen. Partisan, knee-jerk responses, therefore, whether always ‘liberal’ or always ‘conservative,’ too often miss the mark. What good are our own brains, the meaty ones inside our bony skulls, if we are going to run a preset program to yield a programmatic answer to any and every situation? Sometimes – shock! -- it even may even make sense to change our minds! (What a concept, eh?) On some issues both “sides” have important things to say, serious considerations we need to take into account, and there are many issues with more than two “sides,” although our two-party political system has a hard time accommodating and acknowledging that truth.

 

Here, though, is the bottom line: How should we treat this precious earth we could never ourselves have created? How should we treat one another while we are here? And what kind of country do we want to bequeath to future generations? We Americans are in a pivotal moment right now, one that will all too soon be history and one that the future will judge us by. 

Long after we have returned to dust, the consequences of our decisions will be playing out. We won't see the harvest, but it will come.

 

I Am in Mourning For Our Country

In Minneapolis, many bookstores were already closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and now more have been damaged in rioting following demonstrations over the brutal murder of George Floyd, but you will not find self-pity in the words of these booksellers. As one of them acknowledged, property damage is the "least tragic" aspect of the story. So while I feel sympathy for bookstore owners and employees, most of my sympathy has to go to the murdered man's family -- and to our country at large.

Since March, we have been reeling under a global pandemic that reached our shores. One hundred thousand Americans died of coronavirus. Businesses across the country closed, and people lost their jobs. High school and college graduates had no graduation ceremonies, and children's birthdays had to be celebrated with drive-by parades of friends waving from their cars. That alone has been difficult. A long haul. Unprecedented, to use a word that has never been used so many times in so short a period in my lifetime.

The absence of meaningful national leadership has been appalling and tragic, but unsurprising. Who could have expected anything different or better, given the last three and a half years? Queen Elizabeth, Governor Andrew Cuomo, and past presidents George Bush and Barack Obama stepped forward with calm words of comfort and encouragement. We could have used comfort and encouragement on a daily basis, but we did not get it.

Then came the murder of yet another black man by a police officer, murder committed by someone pledged to protect citizens, murder captured on video for all the world to see. Rage is understandable. Don't you feel it, too? "Violence doesn't solve anything," many people say -- but tell me, what has? Peaceful demonstrations? Cases of brutality and murder brought to the courts? More extensive police training? Body cameras? 

[Update: Here is what we got from the White House today, since this post first went up.] 
[Update 6/2: Houston police chief weighs in.]

I am in mourning for this country. 

I understand the rage. I understand the impulse to destruction, even knowing it "won't solve anything." When nothing reasonable has worked, what is left?

And yet -- from so many credible reports, much of the destruction was not caused by demonstrators from the Twin Cities but by outsiders who came in for the sole purpose of, it would seem, discrediting legitimate protest. What could be more reprehensible? I do not understand that.

And I do not understand disrespect taken to the extreme of causing death. I don't understand how it is allowed to go on and on. I don't understand why so many white Americans fail to get the message of "Black Lives Matter," misinterpreting it by inserting an "only" that was never there. Black lives matter, too. How can anyone not see? I don't understand the lack of understanding.

Another thing I don't understand -- and some of you may disagree with me on this -- is why the launch of a rocket into space is supposed to fill us with hope for the future of our country. "The heavens are opening"? Great! So now we can go mess the heavens up, too? While the mess here on earth worsens? How is that supposed to make anyone feel good?

I am in mourning for this country. My country. Your country. Our country.

But mourning by itself solves nothing. It is a luxury we cannot afford.

We Are All on a Rollercoaster

This  has nothing to do with my subject, but she always calms me down.

How are you feeling? Where are you, emotionally? Contented? Restless? Anxious? Got cabin fever, or are you grateful for unstructured time -- or both in turns? Angry at fate and fearful of what’s coming? Counting your blessings? Downright depressed? Maybe confused about what you’re feeling?

A friend said she woke up a couple days ago and felt calm, and that worried her: Had she lost her mind? Had her brain ceased to function? Where was her usual, reasonable, familiar pandemic anxiety?

And it came to me, reading her messages, that we are all on a rollercoaster, every single one of us, but we are all at different points in the looping path on any given day or even at any given moment, so while no emotion any of us feels is inappropriate, we can sometimes be impatient with each other’s expressions. But the feelings themselves are perfectly (can I use this word?) normal. Given the times. All of them.

Gratitude feels good. Anger doesn’t. Sometimes we can shift gears to get from a bad feeling to a good one, and other times we just have to ride out a sickening stretch until we get to a smoother, easier section. Despair at night, joy in the morning – or the other way around, depending on your temperament. Fear, even terror. A blue funk. The sunshiny flash of unexpected happiness, the glow of contentment, or the sweet respite of calm – unless the calm brings worries of its own, as it did for my friend. 

“I’m just tired of it.”

“I want it to be over.” 

Me, too. I’d love to return to that old expectant (false but happy) sense of security I had in early winter 2019 when looking ahead to summer 2020, lining up Thursday Evening Author guests for bookstore soirées in the Artist’s gallery! Those days of planning now seem like some kind of long-ago lost innocence.

My philosophy of life in a nutshell, which is about all of anyone’s philosophy that most people want to hear, is simple: Everything is a double-edged sword. Or, as Joni Mitchell so memorably expressed in her song “Both Sides Now,” there is an upside and downside to everything. In her lyrics, the singer looks back to her past positive impressions, compares them with present cynicism, and concludes that she doesn’t “really know” clouds, love, or life “at all.” But listen to the song. What she can’t help believing in are her “illusions,” that is, the joy and magic that she isn’t feeling in the present moment. 

Can we believe in something when we’re not feeling it, or do our feelings overpower us and create our beliefs? More specifically, can we continue to believe in hope when we're feeling hopeless?

-----

I started writing these thoughts and had to set them aside for a couple of days. Was I depressed or just irritable and blue? 

Depression is a family curse, so I am familiar with it, but in my experience true depression is like interior weather (not situational or caused by something in the outside world), and there’s a horrible physical component to it. I describe it as being encased in a suit of dread. Imagine it as a rigid suit of armor that you’re locked inside. So, no, I wasn’t there, thank heaven! But neither was I enveloped by contentment or anything positive. I went for a walk and dragged myself along, hardly enjoying my surroundings or a pleasantly cool desert morning.

Quite frankly, while I have a lot of happy moments or even hours, positive moods can seem pretty fragile these days. Easily dispelled. Personal contentment can evaporate in an instant with a single blast of bad news, of which there is no shortage. Which brings me back to my rollercoaster theme and its limitations. 

When you go to an amusement park and ride a rollercoaster – when one rides, I should say, because I have never been on a rollercoaster in my life – my understanding is that (1) you know approximately how long the ride will be, (2) that you'll be safe, and (3) that the car will eventually stop and you’ll be able to get out right where you started. Well, right now, these days, on the coronavirus rollercoaster, we have none of these assurances. All we have is uncertainty.

Is it any wonder our emotions are all over the map? It's easy to say we should "live in the moment" and admit our powerlessness, not so easy to maintain that attitude throughout each passing day. 

I try to make most of my posts here upbeat, to brighten readers' days, and I'm certainly not trying to bring anyone down today with reminders of what you already know, that these are damn difficult times. I just thought it might help, if you're feeling blue, to know that you're not alone in that, either. It's okay to feel bad. We all have our private storm clouds.

But if you're not feeling great this morning, I hope you will feel better this afternoon or tomorrow. As for me, I think I've got my "second wind" and can pick up my feet and go on until the next storm hits -- wherever the hell it is we're going!

Into the unknown!

What Do You Think You Will Remember?

My desk in December

When we arrived at our ghost town hideaway for the winter, I made notes on the route we’d taken west and the places we had stayed: Kalamazoo, MI; Springfield, IL; Sedalia, MO; Wellington, KS; Dalhart, TX; Alamagordo, NM; and finally here, Dos Cabezas, AZ, 15 miles southeast of Willcox, AZ, and about 25 beautiful, winding miles west of the Chiricahua National Monument. The first page of the same composition book was already taken up with lists of things to pack (one list for the humans, another for the dog), and it was only on our second morning in the ghost town that I began keeping a sketchy narrative history of our season here. Back then, happy to be settling in for a few months under a sunny sky filled with wintering sandhill cranes, I had no idea that my notebook would become, in time a plague journal!

I always read a lot of books during our Arizona winters … write letters … blog about my reading and about our Cochise County adventures and explorations. It just happened that this year, for the first time, I also began keeping a journal. I certainly didn’t anticipate that I would be recording historic events; I merely wanted to fix everyday small details on paper. Because those little everyday details, the stuff of short-term memory, are easily lost as days slip into the past, and my time here is precious to me. I want to be able to hold the days in my hand as it were, and look at them again and again when I am far from these mountains and this desert. 

Winter morning

So most of my mornings began, starting in December, with a session of journal-writing. The weather (no, it isn’t boring), social engagements, personal happenings (getting keys to the mailbox is a big deal to me), daily errands, and descriptions of surroundings flowed from my pen, along with re-emerging childhood memories and a few observations of the current national political scene. Quite a lot about hearing coyotes, through the night and in early, still-dark morning. A few notes on books read.

In short, nothing particularly earth-shaking. And that’s how it went, week after week.

… Sandhill crane count … first visit to the Smile4Jesus Thrift Shop … tales of my husband’s new friend in Willcox, the one I call the Born-Again Bear … brief accounts of dreams (very few remembered long enough to write down) … walks and hikes with neighbors.… 

There were only a few words on the impeachment, although I thought it would never end … and very little on presidential campaigns, debates, caucuses, as I tried to keep attention on politics to a minimum … much more on my volunteer mornings at the library bookstore and the elementary school in Willcox. Of course, the political issues bled in from time to time, from impeachment to debates to caucuses to the State of the Union, because that was the news, nonstop, on the radio and television, but I tried to keep my attention locally focussed, as much as possible, escaping from the news to the outdoors.

People I love found their way onto the pages. One of my sisters was in Mexico for two weeks. The other went through the pain of losing an old dog. We spent February 15-17 in Tucson and anticipated a return in March. The Artist had a birthday. Then in late February, my former husband, the father of my only child, was moved (after only three days) from hospital to hospice, where he died a week later, and my son and I began spending daily time together on the phone. 

In the larger world, a few of the Democratic hopefuls began to drop out of the race for candidacy, but too many yet remained, and far from business and home responsibilities in Michigan as I was, I found the world crowding in, events racing along, piling on top of each other without time to catch a breath. In many ways, the world seemed all present, minute by minute. 

Yet only on March 10 did coronavirus come into my journal, when I noted that the Tucson Festival of Books, scheduled for March 14-15, had been cancelled the day before, adding at the bottom of that page: “Politics and coronavirus — our world today.” Two days later, March 12, I recorded that the president had announced, the evening previous, a ban on travelers from Europe, Ireland and the U.K. excluded. We began hearing daily about the terrible situation in Italy. COVID-19, the virus was now called. Less than two weeks ago. And yet now, March 20 as I am composing these thoughts, just past the spring equinox — such a short time since we were first told to stock our pantries for a possible two-week emergency quarantine — almost all universities and public schools are closed, churches have stopped holding services, restaurants all over the United States are open for take-out only, grocery store shelves are near-empty in key aisles (paper products, soaps and cleaning products, the dairy case), and more and more Americans, even those not yet on “lockdown,” are “sheltering in place,” even if they have not put themselves under “self-quarantine.” That is our national language now. 

Still, though all of us are affected, each of us is experiencing these days of isolation differently. We are spread out across a very large country, and while some friends find themselves alone, far from family and close friends, others see their households expanding with schoolchildren and college-age sons and daughters home all day. I lost my volunteer jobs, but many other people have lost paying jobs, jobs they needed for basic food and shelter. “Lucky” ones see their savings “evaporating before our very eyes,” while the homeless appear at intersections, holding up cardboard signs. No one can hope to remain unaffected, from the most expendable part-time hourly wage worker to the most pampered trust fund baby whose investment portfolios has plummeting in value.

Here’s another personal note, this one I know shared by many — the strange realization that, simply because of our ages, the Artist and I are in a “vulnerable” group, members of an “at-risk” category. It was already strange enough just trying to get it through our heads that we are no longer young — hell, no longer middle-aged! — we still can’t fully believe that! — and now we are also particularly “at risk”?

For me, personally, there is the added strange feeling of being disconnected, physically, from the world that has been mine for almost 27 years, i.e., the world of books. I am not, after all, in my Northport bookstore, weighing the question of whether to entirely for the duration of the crisis or stay open to process phone and mail orders, make sales through the front door (or deliver books to local customers), and gratefully accept whatever help my little community might offer, along with doing what I might do to help the community. I’m not there. Instead of being “on the front lines,” as it were, I only read each day in Shelf Awareness what is happening with other bookstores around the country. So peculiar and unsettling! My feeling must be something like what my sister felt when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans just after she had moved away, that feeling of I should be there! Then added to that the uncertainty of not knowing if we will even be back in early May as planned — if that will be possible at all. 

That’s part of my story. Everyone else has a story, too, quite different from mine. The general point I’m making is that each of us is having a unique subjective experience of these times, which means that together we will have a staggering number of stories, coming from myriad different vantage points, looking through lenses offering a kaleidoscope of perspectives. 

So, are you keeping a “plague” journal? Years from now, what will you remember? What is strangely ordinary about this time for you? In what ways does the crisis seem real or unreal? What other times of crisis does it call to your mind? How is it unlike anything else you’ve ever experienced? 

What books are you reading, and what kinds of meals do you find yourself putting together? Are you able to get outdoors for fresh air and exercise? Do you listen or watch or in some way follow news compulsively, every waking minute, or do you ration what you let into your consciousness each day? Do you sleep through the night or lie awake? If you sleep, what do you dream? If awake, what are your thoughts? How do you seek out comfort, and what gives you comfort?

With how many other people are you “sheltering in place,” and how is that going? Are you spending more time on the phone, calling and texting, or on your computer, e-mailing and following friends’ posts on social media? Do you feel more or less connected to those you love? Differently connected?

What is the best and worst aspect of this time for you? I should add so far to that previous question, shouldn’t I? Because we don’t know yet what will be the best and worst in the days and weeks ahead.

When I look at my own handwritten journal and see that I only used the word ‘coronavirus’ there for the first time ten days ago, I can hardly believe my eyes, but there it is on the page, although subjectively, right now, it feels like at least a full month that we have been obsessed with this news, every waking minute, to the exclusion of almost all else. I know I heard the news from China before March 10, but at that point, as the absence of it in my journal illustrates, the danger must have seemed very remote, a foreign problem only. That’s how fast everything has been happening.

Friends, I see some of your posts on Facebook, but those “news feeds” will be superseded overnight, you know, by whatever comes next, and even a year from now we will have a hard time remembering exactly when and now the pandemic (another frequently occurring word these days) first touched us personally. And besides, as long as you are “sheltering in place,” wouldn’t you like to use some of your time to make a lasting record for yourself and those who come after you? In all human lives, there are watershed events, some personal, others part of a national or world-historic fabric, and this is one of those times that will stand out whenever, in future, we look back on our lives. If you don’t see yourself as a writer, maybe you can keep a scrapbook or a photo album or make a quilt of “plague times.” We don’t have to be greedy opportunists to find opportunity in crisis. 

What stories will you have to tell years from now?

We each see the world from our own little corner....

To Stretch It Out and Make It Last

If you’re a reader (any why would you be looking at this blog if you’re not?), you probably have had the experience of not wanting a book to end, of wanting to stretch it out to last as long as possible. Many years ago, I had the experience memorably, to the -nth degree, with George Feifer’s Moscow Farewell. I read the book one summer while living out in the country (Barry County, Michigan), where I had that year, conveniently for more than one purpose, an ambitious vegetable garden. The closer I got to the end of the book, the more tightly I rationed my reading, the fewer pages I let myself read at one sitting, until finally I was reading only one page at a time and then going out to the garden to weed and hoe or water or harvest. There might have been a few dishes washed, too, before I gave in again to temptation and picked up the book. But you know what I mean? I could not bear to come to the last page — although ultimately, of course, that’s just what came to pass.

One thing I'm doing at present to stretch out my reading is turning to cookbooks. Those particular books inspire me to launch into baking and cooking projects, which not only help pass the time but give us something to look forward to when we sit down to the table. 

Another technique I've often used for making books last is to have several going at the same time. Say, one in each room of the house. Here in our ghost town cabin, we do not have multiple rooms, but we do have areas, so there are books on bookshelves and tables and next to the bed and sometimes left on chairs, and however long the coronavirus pandemic lasts, we are in no danger of running out of reading material. For one thing, we don’t just read — we also re-read. And by the by, I know not everyone does that, but I’ll never understand how someone can love a book and not want to revisit it, spend time again with characters who became friends during the first reading and re-experience vicariously their lives, whether historical or fictional. Also, re-reading a book is like re-watching a movie, in that one always notices something previously missed.

Sometimes I read a book more quickly than I’d really like, as I did with Joshua Henkin’s Morningside Heights. That was because the publisher had sent me an advance reading copy, and I wanted to write up a review for this blog. And let me say right here that Joshua’s book comes out in June, so please consider placing an advance order for it with your favorite local bookstore, because bookstores, like every other business in these days of pandemic, are hungry for revenue, struggling to hang on, and worrying about how long they’ll be able to do so, and while I haven’t read anything yet about authors’ worries, they too must be wondering nervously about their book sales in this strange year of 2020. 

Here's another book I read more quickly than I would have otherwise -- because when I was still in the opening pages, I told my sister about it and promised to send it to her as soon as I finished, and I didn't want to make her wait too long. How to Catch a Frog: And Other Stories of Family, Love, Dysfunction, Survival, and DYI, a memoir by Heather Ross, held me enthralled. While her childhood was anything but idyllic (cold and hunger were frequent housemates), and while Ross does not gloss over the difficulties, she tells her story with deep love for poor, rural Vermont, and there is little self-pity in her tales, even when she includes in her list of ways she has learned to multitask “sobbing and driving.” At least, I think that was in the Ross book, not in the Barbara Kingsolver book of essays I was re-reading almost simultaneously…. Anyway, those of you readers who also knit and sew and engage in crafts will find a kindred spirit in Heather Ross for other reasons besides her writing, for her entrepreneurial work in fabric design preceded her career as a writer. And if you're smart, you'll ration your reading to, say, a chapter at a time and make the book last as long as possible. Her illustrations are charming, as you can see from these endpapers:

So, yes, getting around finally to making books last, my subject for the day, yes, I am re-reading Barbara Kingsolver’s High Tide in Tucson, and I’m taking my time with it. I had been reading another Arizona writer, Charles Bowden; however, brilliant and incisive and detailed and evocative as his writing is, I needed a break from his bleak, grim, harsh view of la frontera land around me. (Bowden was a journalist, did a lot of crime writing for his newspaper, and he was a hard drinker. Alcohol + immersion in crime = dark view of world. Or maybe it was simply his nature. Who knows? Jim Harrison nailed it when he called Bowden “America’s most alarming writer,” and Jim’s essay using that phrase gave the name to a new book about Charles Bowden, which I will read, eventually, just as I will eventually finish reading Bowden’s Blue Desert, but the world is bleak and grim and harsh enough right now, so I’m taking a break from Bowden.) Kingsolver’s Tucson is friendlier, even when she is attacked in her own home at knifepoint, an incident she disposes of, in passing, with a single sentence:

…Wariness of strangers I learned the hard way. When I was new to the city, I let a man into my house one hot afternoon because he seemed in dire need of a drink of water; when I turned from the kitchen sink I found sharpened steel pressed against my belly. And so I know, I know. But I cultivate suspicion with as much difficulty as I force tomatoes to grow in the drought-stricken hardpan of my strange backyard.

- Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson

My sister would like this book, too, especially the first essay (from which the collection takes name), in which the author tells of inadvertently bringing home a hermit crab with shells she collected on a beach vacation in Caribbean. My sister did the same thing this past winter, returning to the cold Midwest from not-so-cold coastal Florida and finding she had unknowingly acquired a new pet.

(And here’s another coincidence: Barbara Kingsolver writes, “I know, I know,” and in the Ross memoir, one of the most touching moments comes when Jane, her aunt, embraces the young girl and murmurs sympathetically, “I know, I know.” Sometimes people angrily respond to this with “You don’t know!” but both Kingsolver and Ross’s aunt had been there, you see. That was the point.)

An ARC I got from Wayne State University Press, like the Kingsolver essays, is another book I’m stretching out, but for different reasons. Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women in Food and Farming, by Emita Brady Hill, is a collection of oral histories of women from my northern Michigan home, and since I know the majority of women personally, picking up the book is like sitting down with friends and listening to their stories: I can hear their voices as I read the words on the page. Out here in the Southwest at present, so far from the Great Lakes, and hungry for the voices of Michigan friends (though also very happy to be near Arizona friends, whom I will miss in turn, come summer), I want to make this book last as long as possible. Also, Emita Hill and the first woman in her book, dear Julia Brabanec, are scheduled to be my first Thursday Evening Author guests, and right now, with all of life and commerce, including the book world, hanging in such uncertainty, I can only hope we will be able to get together in June as planned. So, a few pages at a time….

Then there is reading in bed. 

In December 2019, when we first began the winter’s nighttime reading aloud in bed, the Artist and I picked up a book we’d enjoyed before, My Life in France, by Alex Prud’homme and Julia Child. It was Julia’s life, of course, as I’m sure you know, and her irrepressible personality comes through every chapter. Also, the Artist and I love Paris, as did Julia, so we love picturing the scenes she describes and laughing with delight (and occasionally tears in our eyes) over the situations of her French life with her own beloved husband. Re-reading this delightful book was anything but “old hat” to us.

Somehow, though, we fell away from reading aloud for a while, and when we got back to it we tried something else (and I forget now what that was), but when one of the books I gave the Artist for his birthday was The Silent Traveller in Paris, by Chiang Lee, that’s the one he wanted me to read aloud at night, and we are currently having a wonderful time with it. Some nights we read a single chapter, sometimes two, and sometimes only a few pages. It doesn’t matter. It’s all very satisfying to us both. I have read many, though probably not all, of Chiang Lee’s books, and I love every one I’ve read. His illustrations add to the charm of all his silent traveling accounts.

When I sense I am losing my audience, though, I suggest we stop for the night, and I pick up something else with which to read myself to sleep. Right now it’s Wild Horse Country: The History, Myth, and Future of the Mustang, by David Philipps. I don’t need to explain that choice, do I?

How about you? What are you reading these crazy days? Do you re-read favorite books? Do you try to stretch out books you’re enjoying to make them last longer? Please tell me, because there are too many days I walk out to an empty mailbox, making these online connections all the more precious! 

Yesterday was cold and windy and rainy here in the mountains, not at all a day inviting long walks. Sarah and I did walk to the mailbox, however, and — lo and behold! Oh, joy, the mailbox was not empty! There was a book I’d ordered through Alibris from a seller in California, one that ought to hold me for a while, don’t you think?