A Little Spring Break

/ ocub / Leave a comment

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings. – Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so? – Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working. – Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Possibly from reading those quotes maybe you can tell I will be taking some time off? Yes. Time away. A few days. Not going far. Staying pretty close to home. Resting. Reading. Cleaning. Raking. Hopefully! And whatever else I have the mind to do. If raining… reading, b&w movies, and napping. Good food. Just some down time. I’m hoping that Mother Nature will be agreeable.

The store will be closed March 24-26. I’ll be back in on Thursday (Mar 27) to finish the week in the store. We’ll see how this goes. That means before summer hits I might be taking off a few days here and there.

Thanks!

That’s why people take vacations. Not to relax or find excitement or see new places. To escape the death that exists in routine things. – Don DeLillo, White Noise

Marching Into Spring

/ ocub / Leave a comment

March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside. – V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Isn’t that quote just the truth? But it is March. I feel the month is the door for Spring. Okay, it may just be a peek but somedays it’s opened wide. I love those days. Yes, even if the door gets slammed shut. Soon it’ll be open wide and stay open for a long time. Front porch reading. Reworking gardens, now that I got them back into shape. Last summer was the summer of heavy-duty gardening. I want to start ticking off my To-Do List.

On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars – Something good will come out of all things yet – And it will be golden and eternal just like that – There’s no need to say another word. – Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

The store has been humming along. The I Hate February Sale went well. Books moved and well, books came in too. Funny how that is. Buddhism. Classics. Crafts, including metalwork. Herbal. Chinese Medicine. And of course, a variety of fiction -semi-current and vintage, came into the store. All sorted, cleaned, and shelved. Just waiting for you to discover.

At the end of the month – March 25 and 26, the store will be closed. I am going to have some down time. I’m hoping for warm March weather. You know, those Mother Nature gifts when you really need it. Frankly, I need spring. But regardless of the weather, I will make the most of it. That you can be sure of.

Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. – James Joyce, Ulysses.



I Hate February! So, Let’s Have a Sale!

/ ocub / Leave a comment

All the evil hate in the mad heart of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind that cut its way cruelly across Central Park and down along Fifth Avenue. – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long.” – Anna Quindlen

I think you all know that I hate February. And yes, I truly do. The reason is legit.

One day several years ago I was having a very melancholy day and being in the bookstore, I knew I couldn’t have that. Owning a used bookstore is supposed to be fun. Right? So, I asked myself how could I turn it around to make it a great day? A sale! But what do I offer as a discount? 10%? 20%? What? Then I remembered what Ben told me. That would be Ben from the Country Bookshop in Plainfield. He said if you have a sale make it a 50% sale! That way everyone has fun. Customers will enjoy the savings and well, you’ll start seeing holes on your shelves and that’s always good because heaven knows there will be more books you can unbox to fill those holes. And it’s good for the cash register. So, from that conversation in my head, I came up with the I Hate February Sale.

And it actually starts Friday, Feb 14. Why not? I have chocolate!

Recap of 2024 and Looking Towards 2025

/ ocub / Leave a comment

 If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one’s time—the stuff of life. – Carl Sandburg

Goodbye 2024. Hello 2025. What a year. 2024 is soon done and ready to be put away. I’m looking forward to 2025 and see what mischief it’ll cause.

I was caught. I couldn’t read. Couldn’t embroider. Couldn’t wrap my head around anything but doing nothing but cleaning, sorting, shelving. In the bookstore and at home, too. It’s winter and for me that means piles of books I want to read, and stacks of material and baskets of embroidery floss to work through.

So, I didn’t finish many books, but I started a lot. I read nine books. Three about Ulysses S. Grant, soldier and president. Two by local author, Steven Kiernan. Also, Dodie Smith, Amor Towles, and Fiona Davis. I’m once again participating in an online book club hosted by the Grant Cottage State Historic Site in New York. This year we will be reading two books on Grant.

Thanks to Goodreads I see I have started fourteen books this year. Almost finished Kevin Graffagnino’s , Ira Allen: A Biography. It is jammed packed with Vermont history. I already know I have to reread it so I can absorb it all. Highly recommend it. Plus, his newest, Vermontiana: An Annotated Checklist, 1764-1899. And I’ve started several on the Revolutionary War as well as the French & Indian War. Trying to familiarize myself particularly on our area of Vermont and New York. Also a historical book on Salamanca, NY where I once lived as a little girl. Novels? I have started a few: Seize the Day (Saul Bellow), The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), The Nightingale (Kristen Hannah), Barkskins (Anne Proulx), The Moon and Sixpence (W. Somerset Maugham), plus, plus, plus. Crazy. But I must get going on Grant at 200: Reconsidering the Life and Legacy of Ulysses S. Grant. Fortunately, it’s just 40 pages before our first meet-up so I must get cracking.

I’m not going to beat myself up for not completing books but marvel on how many I started and work on trying to finish them during 2025. There wasn’t a lot of porch rocking and reading this past summer as the gardens were always yelling at me. I’m going to be looking for my creativity spark to come alive again. Heaven knows I’ve got floss enough and vintage material and spools that I like to work with. And books. I’ve books galore!

Before I forget, I am going to take time at the start of the year to take care of me: reading, b&w movies, embroidering and start 2025 refreshed and renewed. I think I deserve it. So, see you Thursday, January 5, 2025.

Celebrate 18 Years!

/ ocub / Leave a comment

I finally cleared off my stool and moved the stacks that were hiding the laptop. All so I could add a new post. Oh, it really has been a while.

Life has been good to this used bookstore. Busy, busy, busy. From accepting books, purchasing from various book scouts, and viewing collections. To cleaning, sorting and shelving. Shuffling boxes around to go through, or to place out of the way to go through later. Trying to keep up with the errant leaves making their way into the store. All’s been good and as it should. No complaints. And, of course, sales.

Here it is, the last days of November. Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving are special days. I have owned Otter Creek Used Books for eighteen years. 18! And that means, books are 50% off.

Eighteen years of being a used bookstore owner is blowing my mind. I am not sure why this number means more than say, five, ten or fifteen. But eighteen is blowing my socks off. Maybe because I feel I’ve done it.

Thank you all! In much appreciation. To The Vermont Bookshop. MarbleWorks Pharmacy and Costello’s Market. And especially to all my customers throughout the years. Now, come in and enjoy the 50% Sale Friday and Saturday, November 29 and 30.

Taking a Short Break. Very Short.

/ ocub / Leave a comment

But a break. I need to kick back. Stuff my face with fried clams, lobster, fries, taffy, and anything else the shores of the Atlantic offers up. I need to hear the pounding of the waves. Sand under my feet and between my toes. Most importantly, I need to sit and close my eyes, smell the ocean, and clear my head. Leaving bright and early Sunday morning and won’t stop until I get to a clam hut. Scouting used bookstores will be reserved for the way home. A pleasant way to get back into the mindset of a used bookstore owner.

See you 10 am Wednesday, August 7.

What are you Reading?

/ ocub / Leave a comment

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.
– Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

What are you reading? How many books do you have in your stack? Do you read one book at a time, or multiple books over the course of time juggling between them? Do you keep a book or two or more in the car? Another in your bag or backpack? How about next to your bed? Or one in the living room? One stashed in your desk at work? Or just carry that one book wherever you go and won’t start another book until you’ve finished it?

Fiction aisle in the Big Yellow Room at OCUB

How about a book club? Are you in one? Are you relieved that someone is telling you what to read and then all getting together to discuss the book? Takes away the decision of choosing. Or are you in a book club where you attend the gathering and talk about the current book you have read.

When you read do you read silently? Or do you read out loud, even to yourself. Novels? Poetry? I find reading Virginia Woolf out loud is helpful and have found out through conversations, I’m not alone.

I know, lots of questions. I get asked these questions all the time and always happy to answer. We all have our own reading style from what we read, how we read, to where. I enjoy the conversations I have with customers. Talking about what we are all reading. Fiction to biographies. Historical to the sciences.

Mainly I get into a groove of reading all the books an author wrote. Or the desire to immerse myself to learn about someone or place. Like when I went through my hip replacement, I decided I had to learn more about Hemingway. So, I read bios, and his earlier works. That lead to Martha Gellhorn. Currently I’m in an online reading group with the Grant Cottage State Historic Site learning more about President and General, Ulysses S. Grant.

Well, the boxes are calling out to me. Especially the boxes of Sci-fi that came in this morning. Got most of the literature up on shelves from last week’s boxes.

Oh, and what am I currently reading? RULES OF CIVILITY by Amor Towles. (Have you read A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW? Loved it.) Also reading THE LOWEST TREES HAVE TOPS, by Martha Gellhorn. Finishing Fergus M. Bordewich’s KLAN WAR: ULYSSES S. GRANT AND THE BATTLE TO SAVE RECONSTRUCTION. Also reading PACHINKO by Min Jin Lee. Towles’ and Gellhorn’s travel with me in my bag and Bordewich’s is at home as well as PACHINKO.

What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life. – Stephen King

A Little Spring Break

/ ocub / Leave a comment

March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside. – V.E. Schwab,
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Then sometime there in late March, after the Indian violets had come, we would be gathering on the mountain and the wind, raw and mean, would change for just a second. It would touch your face as soft as a feather. It had an earth smell. You knew springtime was on the way. – Forrest Carter, The Education of Little Tree

OCUB will be closed for a few days next week – March 26 and 27. Just a little time away. Time to maybe get in some spring house cleaning, prepare flower and veggie gardens. Or to just sleep late, read a couple of books while enjoying tea and chocolates from a friend.

See you Thursday, March 28!


“Where are you going on vacation?”
“Nowhere. I’m going to read. I love reading.”
-Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis


Made it to March! Yahoo!

/ ocub / Leave a comment

After a certain age, time just drizzles down upon your head like rain in the month of March: you’re always surprised at how much of it can accumulate, and how fast. – Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

Now is the month of Germinal in the Republican calendar: the month of hyacinth, and bees, and violet, and primrose. It is also the windy month; the month of new beginnings, and I have never felt it so strongly as I feel it now: that sense of possibility; that irresistible lightness. – Joanne Harris, The Strawberry Thief.

Ok, even I have to admit that this past February was actually a nice month. This time. This year. But know I really do hate February. For personal reasons. And now, here we are in March. A big sigh and a happy face.

The I Hate February sale was awesome. A lot of books were carried out. Armloads, bags and boxes. Everyone seemed happy with their purchases as well as me. Now it’s time to ready the store by reorganizing shelves, corners, stacks and all. I am taking a break accepting books. I think used bookstores need to do that once in a while and now is a good time especially after the sale. You know, restock shelves, go through inventory, pull out books from the storage area. Re-alphabetize sections as needed. Dust. Make things look good.

I’m currently toying with the idea of taking a week off at the end of March. The last week. I’ve taking a few days off here and there but not a full week and I think I need to. To get my head together. Take a pause. Breathe. I’ll make a firm decision in a few days and post it.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I Hate February Sale! 50% Off Books

/ ocub / 1 Comment

…I hate February. So there. I know hating allows bias and bigotry to distort good judgment but consider February. It begins with Groundhog Day, an observance devoted to predicting how rotten the rest of the month is going to be. And the prophet for that forecast is a fat rodent who specializes in harvesting gardens before the people who plant them think the crops are quite ripe.

Now consider the name: February. You can’t even pronounce it. Who tucked that “R” in behind the “B” anyway? Feb-brew-airy. Right. How often do you hear it that way? Feb-you-airy. Feb-wary. And for those with the British speech defect, even Feb-bry. - Steve Delaney, Vermont Seasonings: Reflections on the Rhythms of a Vermont Year.

A kindred spirit!

In a newly arrived stack of books, I found Delaney’s book and started to skim it. It’s divided by months, and I’m not sure why but the author begins the year with March. Ends with February. Thumbing through the February essays I couldn’t stop laughing. I one hundred percent -100%! – agree with him on disliking February. We have different reasons but we each do not like the month, and I have to say, I feel vindicated. I wish we could commiserate over a cup of coffee or tea or a shot of bourbon.

I will celebrate my dislike for the month by having a fun 50% sale on all books. (Ben, owner of The Country Bookshop recommended, if you have a sale make it fun!) And a big bowl of chocolate. Starting Wednesday, February 14 the sale will begin, and end on the 29th. We will get through this ridiculous month.

But think, fast, because the sole grace of February is that at least it’s short, even in Leap Year. – Steve Delaney, Vermont Seasonings: Reflections on the Rhythms of a Vermont Year.