A Valentine for My Sweetheart

My sweetheart Ken is the most unpretentious of men, and he would blush to read this -- but I want to tell you all how lucky I am to have him by my side. He's a good man, a kind man, a very smart man, my pal & my love & my jolly comrade through the years. And no matter what dire straits we happen to be in, we can always somehow make each other laugh.

We'd known of each other through mutual friends, but had our first real meeting all those years ago as we both were leaving the Boston Public Library, books clutched in our hands. That was the first good sign -- Ken and I both love books. That day I also discovered just how curious he was (still is) about the world. I could never understand people who have an interest in Just One Thing, or who have decided their heads are full enough and no more ideas need enter. But Ken is curious about everything, and wonders about everything, and challenges conventional wisdom when conventional wisdom needs to be challenged. Not only do we make each other laugh, we also make each other think. And for that I'm also grateful.

I'm a lucky girl, together with my sweetie. The two of us don't have to travel far to know that life is an adventure.

Reasons to Be Cheerful

We've just gone through Hell Week what with the Massachusetts election, the Supreme Court decision, and the final farewell to Air America. I was so depressed I crawled into bed and watched movies all weekend. Old movies, with Aline Macmahon and Guy Kibbee and Barbara Stanwyck. This cheered me up somewhat.

Still, I needed a reason to crawl out of bed again. I cast about for hopeful signs. I looked out the window and all I could see was sheets of rain. My cats were spooked and my husband was out doing the laundry. Then I looked at the stack of books by my bed and noticed something. A number of these books are recently published titles intended for what is called the "young adult" market: Robert Charles Wilson's Julian Comstock, Jo Walton's Farthing, M.T. Anderson's Feed and the first Octavian Nothing.

The next time you go to a bookstore, check out the YA section. There are so many interesting books out there today available to young people: challenging works, novels of ideas. They're good reads, too. What makes me most cheerful is that young people are choosing to read these thought-provoking works. It also makes me very hopeful for the future.

Enter, Stage Left

ENTER, New-Year's-Gift, in a blue coat, serving-man like, with an orange, and a sprig of rosemary gilt on his head, his hat full of brooches, with a collar of ginger-bread, his torch-bearer carrying a march-pane with a bottle of wine on either arm.
-- Ben Jonson, 1616 Christmas Masque

No doubt it's a bad idea to begin a blog on New Year's Day. How many are begun, how many ended in a week? We'll see what becomes of this one. A smallish enterprise it will be: the thoughts of an obscure bookseller in Western Massachusetts who loves books and music and making things.

So, ENTER: Hey-Jude-the-Obscure, dressed in old jeans, willing to serve, with a myrtle leaf wrapped 'round it for love, a baseball cap on its head full of pins and baubles, arms full of books new and old, and some ginger beer for spice. For consultation, it has a Chambers's Book of Days, a set of Oblique Strategies, a jolly comrade and two wise cats. For inspiration it has a decades-long list of people and places, mistakes and small triumphs, passions and passing fancies.