A Selection of Quotes That I've Enjoyed Recently

Its people are the unmapped attractions of Ireland.  

Niall Williams & Christine Breen

The Pipes Are Calling

pg. 178

This was a beach at the beginning of the world, I thought.  For here on these printless windblown sands was the untouched wild beauty of the earth and sea, unspoiled.  This is what Ireland offers.  The power and peace of this kind of beauty is more inspiring than anything.  

Niall Williams & Christine Breen

The Pipes Are Calling

pg. 213

The body is an organ of memory, holding traces of all our experiences.  The land, too, carries the burden of all its changes.  To truly see and understand a landscape is to see its depth as well as its smooth surfaces, its beauty and its scars.  

Kristen Iversen

Full Body Burden

pg. 338

One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality.  Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind.  But printed books have body, presence.  Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places: in a box full of old picture frames, say, or in the laundry basket, wrapped in a sweatshirt.  But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years.  I often seen electronic books, but they never come after me.  They may make me feel, but I can't feel them.  They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight.  They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it.  

Will Schwalbe

The End of Your Life Book Club

pg. 42-43

In an era of computers, there's something deeply poignant about a political prisoner with his scraps of paper, about a prison convulsed in the hunt for a pen, and about [Karen] Connelly's recognition of the importance of the written and printed word.  It's easy to forget in our wired world that there are not just places like prisons where electronic text is forbidden, but whole countries, like Burma, where an unregistered modem will land you in jail or worse.  Freedom can still depend on ink, just as it always has.  

Will Schwalbe

The End of Your Life Book Club

pg. 132

There are all kinds of serendipities in bookstores, starting with Alphabetical: while looking for one novel, you might remember that you'd always meant to read something by another author whose last name shared the first two letters.  Visual: the shiny jacket on this book might catch your eye.  Accidental: superstitiously, I almost always feel the need to buy any book that I knock over.  And Prompted: both Mom and I gave very serious consideration to any book placed in the "staff recommends" section, particularly if it sported a yellow stickie (aka Post-it note) or a handwritten shelf talker - a bookstore neologism I love, because it conjures such a vivid image of a shelf talking to you, or of a person who talks to shelves.  

Will Schwalbe

The End of Your Life Book Club

pb. 140

A Selection of Quotes that I've Enjoyed Recently

Life will break you.  Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.  You have to love.  You have to feel.  It is the reason we are here on earth.  You are here to risk your heart.  You are here to be swallowed up.  And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.  Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.  

Louise Erdrich

It makes sense that if you stand almost daily in the middle of a perfect crescent of shore, with a vista open to eternity, you'll conceive of possibility differently from someone raised in a wooded valley or among the canyons of a big city.  

 Claire Messud

The Woman  Upstairs

pg. 16

We were overwhelmed by the enormity of the tasks ahead.  Mary had given us a bottle of milk and a spoonful of loose tea, and so, unable to decide what to do, we did what all Irish men and women do: we had tea.  

Niall Williams & Christine Breen

O Come Ye Back to Ireland

pg. 13

You can get a feeling in parts of the West of Ireland that you are the first man and first woman anywhere.  You come upon places so remote and mystifying, so wind-lashed and sea-tossed, so rocky or so green they overwhelm your senses.  Nature fills the silence with the crash and foaming of Atlantic waves, the shrill crying of seabirds, the flapping of different winds meeting amid the mountains.  It makes you aware of your littleness, quietening you in a way nothing else can.  When you come upon one of these places you never want to leave; and yet you want to leave suddenly, to shout out, to share with the world the place that has become part of you.  

Niall Williams & Christine Breen

O Come Ye Back to Ireland

pg. 217

On the clear silver-frosted nights of November, the very air of evening sparkled with crispness.  Gathering hurried armfuls of turf from the haybarn, I felt the shimmering cold of the stars themselves in the night sky.  So little is ever said of the skies of Ireland, and yet between the majestic cloudscapes - bruised blue-gray thunderheads, mists and fogs of every variety, scudding lighter-than-light fluff balls, strands and veils and sweeps and sprawls of cloud - and the moony, starry night skies over bog and mountain, it is so much a part of landscape.  

Niall Williams & Christine Breen

When Summer's In The Meadow

pg. 134-135

In the old blue Peugeot, thinking music and talking weather, we took our favorite road from Kiltumper - westwards to the ocean, then north by the rocks at Quilty.  Driving by the edge of the Atlantic, the roads were so empty and sea-swept they seemed to run precariously along some middle world, a salty misted winter's place between land and sea.  This was the west of Ireland, and here upon the western edge of Clare, as much as in the magical counties of Kerry and Connemara, Sligo, and Donegal, the shape and feel of the landscape evoked that special feeling that was all wildness and wind, a kind of tossed and solitary beauty that staggered and silenced the heart even as you drove through it.  

Niall Williams & Christine Breen

When Summer's In The Meadow

pg. 178-179

Top Ten Books I Read in 2012
(the visual version)

(in no particular order)

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

American Canopy by  Eric Rutkow

Londoners by Craig Taylor

One Hundred Names For Love by Diane Ackerman

Shine by Lauren Myracle

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Every Day by David Levithan

The Watch That Ends the Night by Allan Wolf

When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Books Read In 2012
(chronological)

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman

Then Again by Diane Keaton

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche

The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault

Stiff by Mary Roach

London Under by Peter Ackroyd

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Sweet Valley Confidential by Francine Pascal

Underdogs by Marcus  Zusak

Forgotten Bookmarks by Michael Popek

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Shine by Lauren Myracle

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

Londoners by Craig Taylor

The View From the Top by Hillary Frank

After by Amy Efaw

A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore

The Blue Jay's Dance by Louise Erdrich

Without a Map by Meredith Hall

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

You're Not Doing It Right by Michael Ian Black

Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams

There Is No Dog by Meg Rosoff

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

The Watch That Ends the Night by Allan Wolf

When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams

Quiet by Susan Cain

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

One Hundred Names For Love by Diane Ackerman

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson

Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead

Priceless by Robert Wittman

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

The Other Woman's House by Sophie Hannah

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart

The Dead Lie Down by Sophie Hannah

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart

F For Effort! by Richard Benson

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Broken Harbor by Tana French

Weird Things Customers Say In Bookshops by Jen Campbell

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

I Suck At Girls by Justin Halpern

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

The Nao Of Brown by Glyn Dillon

American Canopy by Eric Rutkow

The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo

The Big House by George Howe Colt

Mother & Child by Carole Maso

Friends Like Us by Lauren Fox

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens

Between Shades Of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Sugarhouse by Matthew Batt

One For The Books by Joe Queenan

Office Girl by Joe Meno

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Every Day by David Levithan

The Age Of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth Laban

My Heart Is An Idiot by Davy Rothbart

Since I work in a bookstore, when I have the night off, I like to really live it up.

By, you know, going to another bookstore.  I live on the wild side, what can I say?!

Portsmouth Book and Bar

There were delicious snacks.  

Kristin, enjoying her beer and the delicious snacks.

That's my cider on the shelf.
They have a great selection of books, and that's not just the alcohol talking!

My cider makes another appearance.
Books everywhere!  Even the windowsills.  

The renovation looks great.

The woman in the bottom right is reading on a kindle.  Poor form lady, poor form!

The back half of the store is where most of the books are located.  

The grand opening event was very packed.  It was great to see so many people turn out to welcome the business to Portsmouth, but I'll be hoping that there are a little less people when I go back.  It was a bit hard to browse with so many people milling about and any seats were constantly occupied.  I can hardly blame anyone for wanting to spend a lot of time there as I can't wait to browse more when the crowds have thinned out a bit.  Though that might be wishful thinking on my part.  So far, I've heard positive comments from anyone that has visited, so it might be crowded all the time!  

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had the chance to go through some old papers at my parents' house.  When I was a child, my mother kept a box that she filled with important papers from my childhood.  Each of my siblings and I had such a box and from time to time growing up, we'd hear, "you'd better put it in your box."  I've scanned through the contents before but I don't think I really took the time to read everything like I did this time.  There was such an array of items in my box: my IEP, a family portrait I drew in first grade, my sash from Girl Scouts, folders filled with writing assignments from fifth grade through eighth grade, an invitation to my high school graduation.  Also included was this:

At eight years old, I was already establishing myself as a bookworm.  About that time, a wonderful thing happened in my life.  A children's bookstore opened in my town.

 

There was no better birthday present than one of their gift certificates enclosed in a red envelope with my name written on the front.  The address was different back then in the late eighties, but I'm thankful to still be able to visit the bookstore of my youth.

That chair out front is a newer addition, too.  

Here's a different angle of the chair, which you've hopefully noticed is comprised of  the A,B,C's.

When Eight Cousins opened, there were multiple other bookstores in Falmouth though none were exclusively for children.  Unfortunately those other stores have since shut their doors.  In their absence, Eight Cousins has evolved into a bookstore for every age in the community, offering books for adults as well as their vast selection for young readers.  I'd love to regale you with tales of me discovering the classics that were stocked on the shelves of Eight Cousins, but I can't.  I was consumed by a love of Sweet Valley Junior High books and the Babysitter's Club.  Was the super edition in stock??  Did Logan like Mary Ann?  Would Jessica continue to be the bad twin?  These were pressing questions in any young girl's life.  And I discovered the answers while cementing my love for reading.

Not only was I a customer, I also had close connections to the staff.  One of my close childhood friends and my sister both worked at Eight Cousins at various times.

My sister, in costume, being led down Main Street by a friend during a First Night celebration.  Its hard to see in those costumes so a guide is very helpful.    

I found my way into their backroom a few times too, folding the newsletters that would grace customers' mailboxes.  Even once I was past the age at which those newsletters were aimed, opening the mailbox to reveal the latest one still excited me.

If you find yourself on the Upper Cape, the book nerd in me can't recommend Eight Cousins enough.  You won't be disappointed.

A Selection of Quotes that I've Enjoyed Recently

"As we rush headlong into the twenty-first century, the physicality of trees seems more vital than ever.  The modern workplace and home are becoming increasingly antiseptic.  Americans now spend their days staring into computer screens that receive information as if by magic.  Daily life seems alarmingly virtual.  Trees provide the antidote.  The smell of pine needles, the crunch of autumn leaves, the roughness of bark are all reminders that we are a part of nature.  Tree hugging, in its most literal sense, offers a reconnection with the physical world, the world of our forefathers.  The forests and their trees are a sanctuary for the spirit.  To enter them is to seek renewal."  

Eric Rutkow

American Canopy

Pg. 347-348

"The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed.  Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it.  A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful."

Christopher Hitchens

Mortality

Pg.  50-51

"I am of Irish descent, and to the Irish, books are as natural and inevitable a feature of the landscape as sand is to Tuaregs...When the English stormed the Emerald Isle under Cromwell in the seventeenth century, they took everything that was worth taking and burned everything else.  Thereafter, the Irish had no land, no money, no future.  That left them with words, and words became books, and books, ingeniously coupled with music and alcohol, enabled the Irish to transcend reality."

Joe Queenan

One For The Books

Pg. 9

"Certain things are perfect the way they are and need no improvement.  The sky, the Pacific Ocean, procreation, and the Goldberg Variations all fit this bill, and so do books.  Books are sublime, but books are also visceral.  They are physically appealing, emotionally evocative objects that constitute a perfect delivery system.  Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books.  Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on."

Joe Queenan

One For The Books

Pg. 27