books

Marching Into Spring

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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.



Recap of 2024 and Looking Towards 2025

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 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!

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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.

What are you Reading?

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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

I Hate February Sale! 50% Off Books

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…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.

February – Just A Month to Get Through

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Poetry Section

Stranger, pause and look;
From the dust of ages
Lift this little book,
Turn the tattered pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
Search the fading letters finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!
-Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

Here we are….February. Closer to spring. But the first order must be to get through the month. How are you doing it? Me? I’m in an online book club, part of the 2024 Literary Landmark Virtual Book Club hosted by the U.S. Grant Cottage State Historic Site located in Mt. McGregor, NY. Our first book has been John Reeves’, SOLDIER OF DESTINY: SLAVERY, SECESSION, AND THE REDEMPTION OF ULYSSES S. GRANT. Then onto KLAN WAR: ULYSSES S. GRANT AND THE BATTLE TO SAVE RECONSTRUCTION by Fergus Bordewich. Plus, my side reading which currently is Steve Martin’s SHOPGIRL because when shelving it jumped out at me.

Tea & A Book @ MNFC

Since I’ve been having bookcases built for the store I’ve cut down on my Dinner & a Book outings. Instead, I’ve been enjoying Tea & a Book working it in whenever I can. Stone Leaf Teahouse and the Middlebury Natural Food Co-op are two places I frequent. Both cozy and familiar.

Check out the newer bookcase found in the Children’s Room. Note: no more baskets or apple boxes on the floor. Books all up on shelves. Still working on reorganizing. One more bookcase and some wall shelves to still be made. Then OCUB will be amazing. Oh, paint, or no? So far, no but always welcoming suggestions.

New Bookcase in the Children’s Room

A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.
-C.S. Lewis

I HATE FEBRUARY! Sale…all books 1/2 off

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The most serious charge that can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February. – Joseph Wood Krutch

February – the month of love..?!! No wonder the shortest one in the calendar. – Dinesh Kumar Biran

Even though February was the shortest month of the year, sometimes it seemed like the longest. – JD Robb

I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February. I had it figured out that the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day. – Katherine Paterson, JACOB HAVE I LOVED

Okay, one more!

Terrible, dreepy, dark February weather I remember, and the worst, most frightened days of my life. – Sebastian Barry, THE SECRET SCRIPTURE

So, before anyone says anything at all just know that I truly do not like February. I have always felt it was the worse month in the whole year. Fortunately, it is the shortest, so it does have that going for it. And chocolate. Because one cannot get through the month without a pocket of mini chocolate bars.

And what do I do when faced with a negative? I turn it into a positive. So… the positive here is a Half-off Sale! Yes, all books are 50% off.

I attended a Vermont Antiquarian Booksellers Association meeting a number of years ago and asked the group a question regarding pricing for an upcoming sale I wanted to have. 10%? 20%? What about 15%? Well, Ben, owner of The Country Bookshop in Plainfield, piped up and said have a 50% sale and have some fun. Customers love a 50% sale and it’ll be fun for you. Well, it is easier on pricing. Just deduct half off the penciled price… SOLD! So that began my Half-off Sales that is offered several times during the year. Especially in February. Who needs fun in February? Me!

The sale begins Tuesday, February 14 and goes through the end of the month. Books are all 50%. And there will be chocolate.

February is the border between winter and spring. – Terri Guillemets, YEARS. Well, it’s got that going for it.

And now it’s March!

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2020vaba_fair“Time passes. That’s the rule. No matter what happens, no matter how much it might feel like everything in your life has been frozen around one particular moment, time marches on.” – Cynthia Hand, The Last Time We Say Goodbye

In this case it was February. And now it’s March.  A big sigh of relief. Thanks to all who stopped by to check out the I Hate February Sale. It proved once a gain to be a lot of fun.

March brings changes to the store. Hannah will now only work Mondays and every other Saturday. She has taken a position at Oxford Company in Cornwall. I’ll miss her and our routine but I’m very happy for her. She’ll now be surrounded with art and the ability to put her college degree to good work. I’ll be in the store Tuesday-Friday with every other Saturday off. Monday’s I still have charge of my grandsons.

Also March presents me with some down time. I’ll be getting away the week of March 23-27. The ocean calls me. Fried clams and the most delicious clam linguine on the planet. I’ve already started my pile of books to bring. Have my coffee houses picked out to put my feet up in and hunker down with a juicy novel. And Thursday evening of that week, author Erik Larson will be speaking of his new release, “The Splendid and the Vile”. Very excited to hear him and to dig into the book as I’m currently reading, “In the Garden of Beasts”.

On the last Sunday of March the Vermont Book, Posters & Ephemera Fair will be held in Burlington at the Hilton Burlington on Battery Street. This fair is sponsored by the Vermont Antiquarian Booksellers Association (VABA) and is the 27th annual. The hours are 10-4 and it is free! I will be there this year as well as many of my used bookstore friends and mentors. For nothing else, it will be great to hang out with them. And to check out their tables and shelves. It’s always a great time!

One more March thing. Look for some store happenings on the 13th. I have owned OCUB for thirteen years and the on the 13th of each month I will host some kind of surprise. Or a sale. Maybe even both! Watch for an announcement on Facebook.

“My father was often impatient during March, waiting for winter to end, the cold to ease, the sun to reappear. March was an unpredictable month, when it was never clear what might happen. Warm days raised hopes until ice and grey skies shut over the town again.” – Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

 
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A Library to Dream Of

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“On a cloudy day, when the dim dance of the firelight and the warmth of the sconces are not enough, the books shed their own form of light. By the hundreds, they fill the shelves that stretch across every inch of exposed wall. They rise up to the ceiling, warriors of an impenetrable army, encircling my over-sized armchair and keeping me safe as they whisper their stories softly in my ear.” – Kelseyleigh Reber, If I Resist

“A library of mostly unread books is far more inspiring than a library of books already read. There’s nothing more exciting than finishing a book, and walking over to your shelves to figure out what you’re going to read next.” – Gabe Habash, The Wonderful and Terrible Habit of Buying Too Many Books, PWxyz (news blog of Publishers Weekly), February 16, 2012

“How can you be bored? There are so many books to read!” – Liailah Giftry Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great Mind

img_0590Those are statements book people can relate to. To own a used bookstore is over the top though. Seriously how can it not be when you are surrounded by books – on the shelves, in boxes, or neatly piled throughout the store? And knowing new inventory comes in just about every day. What titles will be found?  To catch a slight glimpse of the personality of the giver and their library. I was speaking to a dealer a couple of weeks ago and he told me he jumps into new arrivals as soon as they come in. He can’t help himself and doesn’t want to be disciplined to finish a box he’s started. I, on the other hand, glance through the new boxes but make myself go back to the box I’ve been working in before I start another one. Well, most of the time.

What about books leaving the store? Of course it is exciting to sell a book knowing each is heading out on a new adventure. Well, let me tell you I recently had the pleasure – and what a pleasure it was! – to shelf a library for a new house. My eyes got wide when I heard of the request. How much fun was that going to be? Hannah and I didn’t know the woman placing this request but through our conversations we came up with a description of what we thought the owner of such a library would be: a world traveler, open-minded, lover of life, diverse interests but mainly a wonderful, down-to-earth woman. Then we got to scour our shelves and fill boxes that would make an amazing library for such a reader. A broad range of titles, authors, book colors and genre. We had a blast. Once the books were in place we received an invitation to view this library. We were so proud of those books. How good they looked in their new home and they knew it. They were certainly standing tall.  Hannah and I, of course, tucked in a book to represent ourselves in this new library. Hannah’s book was Beatrix Potter – The Complete Tales. My contribution was Parini’s,  The Last Station (of course). And yea, we feel we were accurate in our description of her. 🙂

“I never understood people who don’t have bookshelves.” – George Plimpton

 

The I-Hate-February Sale

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FebruaryHere we are again. February.

“Even though February was the shortest month of the year, sometimes it seemed like the longest,” J.D. Robb. And there is, “When God was making the months I think February was a mistake, like a burp. There it was, small, dark, and prickly. It had absolutely no redeeming qualities,” Shannon Wiersbitzky, WHAT FLOWERS REMEMBER. And how about from Alice McDermott, “The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?”

February, February…I just never know what to do with you. So with that there will be 50% sale February 15-27, 2016. I-Hate-February sale.

A side note: a customer called to wish me Happy February. “Just try and make the best of it,” she said. She gets me.