Wednesday, December 21, 2011

So you like Hemingway

I have been agonizing over the sense of guilt for not appreciating one of the pillars of American classic literature for weeks now.
Hemingway.
Hence the prolonged silence.( sure!)
Until today.
It is ok that I could not finish, The Sun Also Rises; it is perfectly fine that its short and journalistic matter of fact style does not sit well with my preference towards lyrical prose and a more psychological introspective approach.
And I can write that in black and white thanks to two people:
Harold Bloom and Arthur Turnbull.
In "How to read and why" Harold Bloom, who likes Hemingway, refutes Frank O'Connor's idea that Hemingway's stories "illustrate a technique in search of a subject", which might not be the same reason why I do not gear towards Hemingway's prose but at least it stands as evidence of an academic debate and it gives me reason not to blame my mental stiffness.
The second reference is interesting because it all starts from a typed correspondence I found this morning in Arthur Turnbull biography of Scott Fitzgerald I sold.
On September 10th 1962 Mr Turnbull writes to the 43rd mayor of Seattle , Mr Langlie asking him information regarding Fitzgerald during his staying in Seattle, for the biography he was writing on the writer.
In one of the letters he writes:" I agree with your analysis of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, I think, dug deeper into himself and was more interested in the human soul as such. Hemingway, was more apt to be triggered by situations of violence and death into which he fitted his people. Where Fitzgerald usually takes off from personality, Hemingway usually begins with action or mood, another way of saying that Hemingway was essentially a short story writer, while Fitzgerald was more the temperament of a novelist."
And reading Hemingway's "Hills like white elephants" made me agree completely.

May your holiday be filled with written words

Peace

Monday, November 21, 2011

Lamplight Books is greatful for...

As Thanksgiving approaches and we are all asked to consider what to be thankful for, Lamplight Books, without any hesitation is thankful for David Grossman having found his way into the store.
It was November 11th 2011, a rainy autumn afternoon, when all of a sudden but with all the humbleness and grace of a gentle soul, the Israeli writer must have popped out of two of the many books he wrote and that were resting on the shelf ( See under: Love and The book of intimate grammar ) because I certainly did not see him walking through the door.
The memory of the pleasant event ( pleasant is a conservative term ) has already modified the shape and form of the exquisite encounter, to the point that only this picture confirms the reality of it.
However what I can say without a shade of doubt is that meeting one of the greatest living authors in the bookstore that day, felt like surfing on the wave of contemporary history, our history, the one that is not on any text book yet, the one that is still shaping the human species of the second decade of the new millennium, a history that might teach us and the future generations that the intellectuals and the visionaries and the poets and the philosophers should really be given a chance , along with the lawyers and the business men and the generals and the rich , to guide us in the search for real, permanent and cooperating coexistence.
If I triggered your sixth sense, curiosity, and you decide to read some of the words that Grossman wrote and spoke in his fiction and non-fiction, you will discover a cocktail of high and refined intelligence mixed with profound humanity and delicate sensibility, you will encounter a true gentleman, a modern renaissance humanist whose existence and presence gives us Hope, which goes hand in hand with Thankfulness.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Packingtown

It does not happen very often that when you go to your local butcher, you stumble into a book in a cage.
To be honest it was not exactly stumbling;
BB Ranch Butcher just opened next door to Lamplight Books and every morning, on my way to insert the keys into the doors of perception, knowledge and tales, I would see Upton Sinclair 's The Jungle, caged up on the meat counter, next to beef jerky and the pork ribs.
One does not need to have read the book to understand the intended reference, however Curiosity elbowed me between my ribs to address William the butcher on this matter and to my " nice display" he unraveled his story.
And Curiosity never fails to reward.
William is a middle aged man, in his mid fifties; he is a butcher, stout and strong, intense blue eyes that really see you when he is talking to you because he has nothing to hide, because he does not pretend.
William has never read an entire book cover to cover in his entire life, he candidly tells me, he is a street person, a people person. Until one day a friend hands him The Jungle and he reads the entire book and he weeps at times and this book became partially responsible for the way he sees and approaches his job.
He will never forget, he carries on, the image of the steam coming out of the slaughtered animals fogging the slaughtering house of a freezing Chicago in the middle of an early 1900's winter season. He will always remember the description of the workers chopping chunks of the animals' frozen blood, off of each others ankles and taking the chunks home for cooking purposes.
As The Jungle stands in front of the next customer who may or may not notice it or may or may not know it, William is cutting and serving meat that he made sure belonged to animals properly raised by local farmers and handled by workers fairly treated, because that is his belief.
Reading pieces and bits about Sinclair 's book, I did stumble on an article published in occasion of its 100 years anniversary (1906-2006) on Mother Jones Magazine. The article quotes the author's first reaction to the political effect that the book had when published, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach", and, Curiosity again, after the stumbling inevitably came the landing and so I landed on the comment of an erudite reader who pointed out the fact that the quote was actually being borrowed directly from Karl Marx 's Capital, in the chapter describing the report of a royal commissioner on the condition of the journeymen bakers of London. Books are like that: they are the only place where time and space do not matter.
If there ever was a meeting point between meat, poetry and philosophy I believe it can be found in William the butcher.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Bibliomania


It is well established by now that reading this blog is the equivalent of squatting down with your ear attached to a World War One style radio, trying to tune in cracking and rebellious frequencies that cannot hold it steady for more than a minute, in the equation of the big picture.
Given that, in the equation of the big picture, the ramblings of a bibliomaniac equal to the whisper of a flower shaking the dew drops off of its petals, I can comfortably rest assured nobody went deft.
Do not let the title mislead you, this post's intent still is to describe what happens when a bookseller buys books; a bookseller is, de facto, a bibliomaniac in disguise. Buying for the bookstore is just an excuse.
There cannot be a bookseller without a book collector and if you ask any bookseller, are you a collector of books yourself? ( a gentler approach to the cruder: are you a bibliomaniac?) they will immediately lower their eyes to hide an expression full of embarassment and they will timidly reply with a sheepish yes. Their house is packed with books up to the ceiling, they have books in storage and they recently invaded their mother's basement with boxes full of the result of their obsession.
Given this context, whether the destination is their own private shelves or those overstocked bookstore shelves matters little because the bookstore is an extension of their need to collect.
The need to collect will never fade away or be replaced; there isn't such a place as "bibliomaniac anonymous" to go and get treated, and the consequences can be devastating, especially financially, but as Jeanette Winterson so perfectly puts it in her essay "the physiometry of books" I recently stumbled on and highly recommend:
it is all a matter of priorities and the way you look at it: your broken window was skillfully and hermetically sealed with plastic so that you could afford your next fix.
From a practical point of description, when out in the jungle, the book scout is a full on hunter: all the senses are in the alert mode, dueller's squeezed eyes, the hands ready to strike, their mind pushing away every unnecessary thought ( why didn't I use the bathroom before ).
From a psychological point of view, million thoughts travel through the hunter's brain's nerves at the speed of light: Hal needs " reading literature like a professor" and " In the heart of the sea", here they are, good shape, mission accomplished; I already have eight copies of "Little Bee" I'll better pass on this one; if I only found a copy of that Hunger Games series everybody want right now, for the life of me I can never find that book used anywhere; Devil in the White City, yes, Time traveller's wife, deceased ( yes, some books die), help, help, The Help, Jody Picoult, nope, Vocabulary of Chinese medical terminology....mmmyes, dear Millenium series isn't it a little too early for you to die?; oh look a beautiful hardback copy of Stendhal's travelogue to Roma, Napoli and Firenze, I am keeping this one.
And so on and so forth...

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Uncle Jim

It might sound banal and obvious but I have to admit that I recently came to the conclusion that buying, selling and reading books are three distinct categories, separate realities ruled by different forces.
Selling involves psychology 101, decent timing, good imagination and a lot of patience.
A customer today asked me to recommend her a book for Uncle Jim who is an avid reader. What does Uncle Jim like to read? She cannot tell. What book made Uncle Jim particularly excited? Cannot recollect. What is Uncle Jim like? he watches CNN and is a retired commercial pilot. Not much to work with Clueless Niece, but damn it I'm going to find you a book for Uncle Jim! What would you recommend, Hopeful Reader? (granted somebody is still reading this blog!)
After squizing my brain like a lemon and rolling my eyes to the four top corners of the store in search for any plausible ideas.....bang....why not, it's a shot in the dark but so is Clueless Niece when it comes down to describe Uncle Jim's reading taste, so the apple might not fall too far from the tree:
The wisdom of the sands, by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. Aviator, explorer, author of the Little Prince.
The recollection of his trips and adventures will feed Uncle Jim's CNN consumption, being the author an aviator will make the retired pilot identify with the character and what sealed the deal was the fact that he wrote a classic children story, with which Clueless Niece is not familiar, but trusted my word for it, and we all love a good fable.
But most important: it was on the shelf.
Et voila': SOLD.
Now, as far as planet Buying and galaxy Reading go.....to be continued.....

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

I got mail


Few other pleasures equal to the one of receiving a book in the mail, by a friend, while at work.
I have never read any of her books, but apparently Andrew Wilson's shortlisted for the Whitbread award biography of Patricia Highsmith is a good start because it reads like a novel and because it includes her letters, diaries and notebooks found after her death.
Although Graham Greene described her as the "poet of apprehension", and Gore Vidal as one of the finest American modernists writers, her novels found a warmer welcome in Europe than her homeland and maybe the Dictionary of Mystery writers can in part tell us why it was so when , under Highsmith, we read, quote: " It has been said that Highsmith's work evokes horror, fear and guilt, but the guilt is all in the mind of the reader; it is the lack of guilt that makes the stories horrifying." As she said in her 'Plotting and writing suspense fiction' , she felt that, quote: " Art has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing".....interesting gal.
It should be an interesting read.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Demain, et . . .


Je suis tombe' aussi.

Je t'aime.

Demain, et . . .



Books carry gifts in them.
Sometimes a book can bring you the gift of wisdom, sometimes its story will change you forever and will always be part of who you become, sometimes it leaves you in the company of a character that you wish to meet one day, sometimes it can save you from lack of resources and make that coffee table work just fine.

And sometimes....

Sometimes, tucked in between the pages, quiet and patient, waiting to be found, you can find a love note, like this one: so succinct and yet so powerful.
The words are simple and exact in their simplicity and the punctuation is the work of a master in the way it frames the sentences and makes them definite and not arguable with the use of the period and it then stretches the reading rhythm with the comma and time dimension with the suspension points.
Please, don't let me get carried away with the speculation around who wrote it, male , female, why tomorrow and not today, in french therefore...we could write a whole book on it.

I also fell. ( to fall in love? I also fell for you? )

I love you.

Tomorrow, and . . .

Say no more. I am in love.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Thank you Kiddos

This week Lamplight Books hosted its first "book reading" for children.
Fifteen extraordinarily well behaved five years old kids from a pre-school in north Seattle sat on a blanket, nose up and mouth open , listening to one of those children books even adults enjoy re-reading a thousand times.
The missing Piece Meets the Big O. By Shel Silverstein.
Usually the triangle missing piece ends up being interpreted with a high pitch tone ( I think you are the one I have been waiting for)while the Big O is obviously played by a baritone ( But I am not missing a piece ).
The lively aspect of reading this book to children is that the adult can really let his/her creativity run wild on a huge variety of noises to keep the attention going: the rolling, the bouncing, the flipping and the flopping are very "noise inspiring" themselves
Not to mention the pages that bear no text, then you can press play and have the soundtrack going ( see the scene where a pac-man like piece is bumping along a flowery field with the missing piece in its mouth, any mumbled song in the style of Chariots of Fire will do ).
The kids had a terrific time and the reader was left completely dehydrated and voiceless for the following hour but loved it nonetheless.

Last but not least, this year Lamplight Books was glad to be part of the initiative " Walk for Kids" ,as one of the sponsors , promoted and organized by The Pike Place Market Child Care and Preschool, that took place June 4th 2011.
Both the bookstore and the preschool hold dear at heart the concept of high standard education, whether that be in the form of self-education through books from a bookstore or with the help of great teachers that you remember for life at the preschool, it is a privilege and an honor to be part of such a caring community. Thank you Pike Place Market! And thank you Kiddos!

Read on

Saturday, May 28, 2011

if wednesdays are waky fridays are freaky


Freaky friday saw the piles
elevate through the miles...
the piles of books are rising to heavenly heights, their towering looks make me feel like I am in a temple in Athens, praying to the Greek Gods that one of these days I will have all the books into their places and off the floor.

Friday was a very strange day, for a couple of reasons; first of all an old Texan man wearing his Texan accent and Texan hat, purchased an old beat up copy of "the joy of cooking" telling me that a long time ago he used to know the lady whose name was written inside.
Not only he managed to find the book, rummaging into the various sale boxes that were laying outside, but he was as surprised as me when I told him that the reason why I had that book was because my neighbor is that woman's grand son, who took me to her house to pick up her books.
The other interesting coincidence happened when a customer asked me where he could find a bookstore by the name of: "This is not your grand ma bookstore", in the vicinities.
To my baffled expression followed my negative reply:
not only I am not aware of such a bookstore being in the vicinities, but I have never heard of such a bookstore in town at all.
However for some obscure reason the name rung a bell that drove me crazy for a couple of hours, until I realized that the day before , while cleaning up some books and looking through the pages to see what kind of treasures I might find, I happened to find a bookmark slash business card of a bookstore named " this is not your grand ma bookstore", located somewhere in the States I cannot remember where.
Freaky Friday ah?

Quiz of the post:
what is the most frequent reason why people have to re-purchase a title?
A. the previous copy was water damaged
B. the previously owned copy was smeared with coffee stains and/or baby food stains and/or wine stains
C.The previous copy was chewed by a mouse and/or a cat and/or a giraffe
D. the previously owned copy was lent to somebody and never returned

the correct answer is D.
If you got it right you just won a groupon and/or coupon and/or advantage card to redeem at the store so that, if you are the one who never returned that copy of The catcher in the rye, it is now your chance to pretend you have never lost that copy and you've also read it and loved it,
and if you are the one that never got their college copy of David Copperfield back , you might find it at the store,with your name in it still.

Read on

Sunday, May 15, 2011

open sesame


Extra extra, read all about it!

Come in , look around , get lost in the dusty shelves , because now you can:

Lamplight Book is open for business.

The magic word has been said and....voila', the doors of the secret cave opened to lead you straight to the treasures....

Enjoy !

Sunday, May 8, 2011

timing is everything

And so now the cells have stopped multiplying themselves erratically and are doing what they are supposed to do, each according to their own function: shelves up, most of the books on the shelves, lights on, counter delivered, cables plugged in.
It is now the beginning of the subtle and delicate phases: the art of displaying (hence the empty shelves you see) and the task of detail-caring...like my gypsy friend says : I am in the process of fine-tuning the store.
Just like at the Opera house when, right before the start, the orchestra is creating that beautiful chaotic melange of fine-tuning sounds of the instruments, mixed with the last acceptable bursts of cough and aborted laughing shrieks of the audience, before the conductor comes in:
This category works better there, let's move it...oh wait, now I have to move this other category as well because it does no longer make sense here...
This process has been going on for a week now and If I did have an audience waiting at the door for me to be ready ,they would have started rioting by now.
The time to start the show is close, very close, but not quite there yet; the books and I are a bit impatient, but we know that in order to perform well, timing is everything.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

The Onion and the Body- part two
















It just occurred to me that it was exactly a year ago that I started Lamplight Books blog, beginning of April 2010.
the second post was promising a part two that I had never fulfilled and it was about the layers and the body of the store.
What a better timing than now to finally fulfill the promise?
Part two is about a body (or an onion )that goes through a complete and extreme makeover.
First of all, all the layers get peeled off so as to get to the the core of the matter:
What is this body made of? What does its heart look like? what kind of energy does this core emanates?
Once these key questions are asked, the stripping can begin because no matter how differently you re-arrange the layers, you will make sure to maintain that same center of gravity.
And so now, after the last batch of shelves was delivered by the Master Carpenter, the skeleton is assembled with its skull, collar bone, ribs, hips, and so on and so forth.
The muscles are next,(remember the muscles part is played by the books themselves), and as you can see, half of them are in their new homes,attached to the bones.
The skin will be the dress with which the body introduces itself to the public. You would think that the books should be assigned that part but I think that the first quick glance is always directed to the general look of the space, its style and its decorations, or lack of them.
Lamplight Books 's dress 's main feature are still them: the lamps and the old type-writer.
No more paintings or art on the walls, not only because all the wall space is now been taken up by bookshelves all the way to the ceiling, but also because, unless you have a real Picasso up, what can you possibly have that is worth drilling the wall for?
So, decoration is going to be minimalistic, and behind a see through dress, the muscles will dance their dance boldly so.

Monday, April 25, 2011

45 down 229 to go

Fiction is completed, A through Z.
After that little triumph, things started becoming unclear for a minute and so I decided to sit down and draw the outline of the store and brainstorm on where to put the remaining 101 categories.
Panic knocked at my door again, but I ignored it and so now I think my new mantra is:
Panta rei. Everything flows. Nothing stays the same, so if I misplace a category, no big deal, I can always change it later.
I find this process of organizing categories, a very tricky and delicate matter, and did I mentioned stressful?. When you find yourself in the middle of it and stuck, you have to focus on concepts such as Logic and Fluidity, which, in a situation of chaos and confusion, are aliens on earth. You want to have what people look for the most,visible and easily accessible, but what is it that readers are NOT looking for. I should line everything right at the entrance , all piled up in huge towers, right in their faces as soon as they come in and leave the rest of the long and narrow canal to roller skating. ( this is the panic talk).
On a more rational note, I should make some decisions based on concepts like: space availability, people's tastes, the volume of a category and , yes, personal taste, hence , a whole wall dedicated to Fiction.The rest will all be born out of its ribs.

Friday, April 22, 2011

one box at a time




Today was the big day of getting the books back. The movers moved back the 274 boxes of books and everything else they had taken out of a space that is 680 square feet big: shelves, tables, chairs, fans, stools, heaters, more shelves.How I am going to fit everything back in will be interesting to figure out. At a first glance I felt instant panic, then, all of a sudden the meditation mantra of the day came: one box at a time, and so I started opening the first box of the mother of all categories, FICTION, A for Abbey and Austen, down to B for Barth and Burrough, through C for Celine and Chekov and D for Didion and Duras all the way to G for Gide and Garcia Marquez ( still not sure why it goes under G and not M ).
A little progress was made for the day, silence was the background music that filled the space in my head and in the store, since I had forgotten stereo and cds at home, so I could hear loud and clear the words : one box at a time, one box at a time, one box at a time.....

Thursday, April 21, 2011

phase one




The floor is done: Red fire. The walls are done: Yellow submarine. Every brush and every rolling strike that was being put on the surfaces, bear the meditation mantra: "with my heart and soul", because, like my hairdresser said to me, it is only by putting your heart and soul into something that it turns out just fine. And when you are busy creating and don't have the time and mental space to find wisdom among the pages of a book, the hairdresser is always a sure shot. The cut was perfect and the bookstore that is traveling now through the birth canal is going to be great.
Heart and Soul.

Monday, April 4, 2011

countdown

It is official.
The countdown has started: in two days I will be signing papers to regain possession of the space, in two weeks I will start painting floors and walls, building new shelving, shoveling books back on the shelf and any time around May 1st is good to be back in business.
Lots of people have been asking how the vacation was and the answer that came into my mind was never the one I resigned to utter. It was no vacation.
Vacation is picking a book or two off of an overflowing shelf, pack them into your suitcase, put two to three weeks vacation leave notice at work, book a flight to a remote and exotic destination, and then come back to thirsty house plants and a jammed mail box.
These were four long months of feeling like a mama cat when her newly born kittens are being taken away to give them up for adoption. She keeps sniffing her nest and looking around to no avail without understanding exactly what happened and ,nonetheless, being unable to give up the search. That is not a feeling you should be hoping to experience when planning your vacation.
All I said instead was: yeah, sure,but it is now time to come back.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Reflections













Here it is. This is where the picture of the Market as it used to be , comes from.
I am not going to spend too many words on it. The book is intentionally poor of text, as the photographer and author of the book lets the images narrate the content. I will only use the author's words, Nancie Gee ,first Chinese woman to author a photographic book in America, to describe the soul of the Pike Place Market that she so beautifully managed to capture with her camera:
"It is the melting pot where people of all nationalities and races have a common meeting ground, a place for old and young, a place where immigrant farmers have found a way to make a living and provide more for their children." In fewer words: the true American dream.
And at the end of the book, Marvin Reed, master market, observes:
"...it is the one place where people can revert to being just human , with no other requisite at all, where the ability to communicate, free of pressure and free of bigotry also frees one from the fast paced, high living society, of conformists and group-oriented people who seem to make up our modern society". And this was written in 1968.
The book was published in 1968, by Superior Publishing Company,Seattle, Washington, now not in existence anymore, although their books pop out every now and then and come my way, usually books about Washington's ghost towns or railroad history.


Monday, January 31, 2011

Books and the afterlife

I know, I had promised I would tell you where the picture of the previous post came from, since it comes from a delightful book worth reading about, but, did you know that booksellers have a hard time keeping promises?
We tend to get carried away with the unfolding of unforseen events that ,like the wind on autumn leaves, stir us in all directions.
Therefore, before I keep my promise, i'll tell you another little fairy tale...
After all the books were packed and stored away, the bookseller, feeling restless in the idleness of not running the bookstore, was nonetheless hitting all her usual places for buying books, trying to restrain herself from spending too much money and forcing herself to be disciplined about what to buy in such delicate times. Of course she failed every time. It is practically an impossible mission, with the result that boxes of books are now taking over her apartment.
In the midst of all this unsuccesful self-restrain exercise, the bookseller receives a phone call from the lawer of Leslie Cameron's estate. The immediate reaction that the word lawer caused to the listener was a sudden thought: whose toes could have I possiby stepped on?
But no, Leslie passed away, and left in her will Lamplight books' contact info so that they would be the first buyers of her entire life time collection of books .
The bookseller was suddenly overcome by a cocktail of mixed feelings: sorry for the tragedy ( she in fact was another victim of breast cancer), the usual feeling of anxiety that house calls always ignite, the sense of excitement that private collections cause, to name a few.
So off she goes into the world of Leslie on First Ave. and Harbor Steps, where she meets Joni, one of the executors of the will.
Joni showes her where the books are, and it only takes her a quick glance to realize that she would spend lots of time and money going through that collection, so she took her jacket off and started digging.
After 20 minutes or so of picking, looking, pulling and piling, another feeling added itself to the pile: the strange feeling of being an interlooper or worse, an invader of a private world that was still warm with life, Leslie's bookshelves! And as all book readers know, home bookshelves don't only hold books, but a whole variety of objects that usually end up there,in that space of the shelf right in front of the books because there isn't really another place for them and because that little balcony is perfect for display: postcards, framed pictures, journals, candles,vases, jewellery boxes, souvenirs that friends brought us from their trips...you can add to the list just by looking at your own bookshelves, I bet ya!
Looking at those objects and moving them around so that she could get to the books, made her peep into Leslie's world and her taste, her fancies and her curiosities. Some objects as well as some of her books, represented future projects, others referred to projects already accomplished, others were totally compulsive buys, we all have those things laying around the house that make us think: what was I thinking!
So she turned to Joni who was organizing everything else that remained of Leslie's life, and asked her if she too had the same mixture of feelings.Joni replied that the mix was so strong she had to take pills to be able to fall asleep at night. The two immediately bonded over that and a friendship was born.
Leslie was a very interesting woman, fascinated with the world in all its forms of espression and curious like a child about it.
I enjoyed getting to know her from the after life, through her objects. She left me with an ecclectic collection of high quality books and a friend and the warm feeling that ,once again, books are magic.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

once upon a time


Once upon a time there was a little bookstore in the hugest farmers' market of the entire world.(exaggerations are a must in story telling)
That farmers' market might not be the oldest in the world but it certainly has a great story behind its carts, stalls and shops.
It all started one morning at the break of dawn, the year was 1907, the month was August, the 17th, a Saturday that year. Everybody was exited that morning, customers and farmers were about to meet face to face, skipping the middle man.
Farmers were about to hand customers their onions and potatoes directly, maybe with a little chat about the weather and the family, a hand shake and a subtotal that would make them both go home content and satisfied.
And from that day on, the market developed into the Pike Place Markets,Inc, where lots of immigrants from Europe and Asia came to sell their produce after becoming farmers in America along with the American farmers, and along with them meat sellers arrived and fish sellers, artists and performers, and of course booksellers and antiquarians joined in because if you hold bread with the right hand you must hold a book with your left one; travelers and tourists started making it a stop during their adventures... and so ,to this day, this place incessantly shouts and shamelessly yells its uniqueness and every day, if you sit on any curb at any of its corners and look for a while, you will see , passing by in front of you the whole wide world.
(the picture comes from a beautiful book that I will tell you about in the next chapter, because suspense is a must in story telling along with exaggerations)

Sunday, January 2, 2011

a fresh start, starts with empty

This is what four hands, four arms and four legs can do in four days of work.
This year's proposition is to make sure this space gets filled with great books again before spring puts greenish buds on the trees and birds build nests on those trees.
Emptiness is definitely a fresh start and all the possibilities can be explored.
It turned out that the early morning rise to move a grand total of 274 boxes of books , happened on the last day of 2010 and not on the first day of the new year as previously scheduled, and the books will be sleeping sweet dreams in a controlled heating system storage with private rooms and lockers and not in a warehouse in Sodo , as previously arranged. So not only the New Year's Eve party was saved but the books are located in a five stars hotel with room service and jacuzzi as opposed to the dorms of a hostel.
The Gods were watching over Lamplight Books that day.