Dog Days of Summer!

August is here, and something not unlike Summer has come at last to Seattle.  Huzzah!  No one is suggesting that this glorious weather will last.  Can't count on scorchin' temperatures in the high seventies every day of the week, people.  But for now though, the flip-flops, the cargo-shorts, the general pale shirtlessness and or tanktops, to say nothing of the beery block-parties all over the city last night?  Totally justified by the glorious sunshine.

Enjoy!

And for our canine companions, please remember, summer need not be just the usual routine of Frisbee in the park, stagnant, standing water, and panting boredom on the hot sidewalk while someone gets a single serving of green tea gelato that will not be shared.  Oh no.

All this month, right here at the always-dog-friendly University Book Store, we will be hosting a new series of public readings for dogs and their grown up humans, every Saturday at 6PM.  Dog Days will feature classic and contemporary short stories on four-footed subjects, read by our own booksellers, right here in the store's event space on the second floor.  Dogs, of course will be welcome as always.

To get things started, this Saturday, the 6th, our own Usedbuyer2.0, Brad, will be reading a story from the great P. G. Wodehouse, and a classic reminiscence by the Scots essayist, physician, and lifelong friend to nearly all dogs, Dr. John Brown.   Rab & His Friends -- that's old Rab is pictured above -- is a remarkable, heartbreaking tale of perfect loyalty, endurance and love.  (Which explains, I think, the need for something from Wodehouse on the bill as well, for balance.)

Do please join us, and bring your human.  We don't mind, so long as they're quiet and well behaved.

Sit.  Stay.

"Stayers-at-Home" or Further Snowbound Reading

And so we are forced to be again today -- "stayers-at-home."  The snow outside our door and up our walk and stairs took a grown man the better part of three hours to clear, including the sidewalk above, as we aren't the kind of neighbors to leave off a thing where our own convenience ends and the more general welfare starts.  Now if that makes us sound better than we are, consider that the grown man doing the shoveling was neither of us: the homeowners.  As my grandmother would have said, "we had a man in."  I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I am awfully glad it was Gary the handyman and not me out there this afternoon.  (If you live in West Seattle, and aren't feeling up to the task of digging out, I'll be happy to pass Gary's number on to you.  He's a good fellow and as handy, as it turns out, with a snow-shovel as he is with a rake.  Bless 'im.)

The phrase "stayers-at-home" I take from Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of Pointed Firs, specifically the story "A Winter Courtship" therein.  the story is a slight one, told between two elderly parties on a wagon ride between  North Kilby and Sanscrit Pond, Maine, one frozen December morning.  I've just reread the story, which is charming.

Sarah Orne Jewett is a reliable pleasure to read and reread, and strangely still unknown to many contemporary readers who might otherwise know the classics of American literature well.  Her novels and stories, and even her poems as it turns out, are just the sort of tartly sentimental reading, it seems to me, called for at this Holiday Season; deceptively simple stories of good people, in a granite hard place, salted with humor and solid American optimism, told in a spare and reliably satisfying prose.  Not every story ends as happily as "A Winter Courtship," but they're all satisfying, each in it's way, hard cider or soft.

Her books are perfect reading for just such days as we're having now.

Snowbound Reading

Getting to the bookstore today may prove impossible.  Getting out of the house at all might not be such a good idea just now.  So this would seem to be the perfect occasion for some wintry reading before the fireplace, next to the space-heater, or just huddled in bed with extra blankets and a stocking-cap.

By way of suggestion, you might try reading some of the delightful stories of Saki.  If you don't know him, Hector Hugh Munro was an Englishman and one of the true masters of the short story.  His stories are invariably funny, and occasionally chilling.

Three stories come immediately to mind when looking out the picture window today at all the evil white nothingness:  The She Wolf -- about the dangers of being glib in matters supernatural, The Wolves of Cernogratz -- which concerns making the best of servant problems, and finally, and particularly, The Interlopers,  of which I am reminded every time I forced to take a walk in the woods.

All three are of course included in The Complete Stories of Saki, from Penguin, available at the bookstore and to be ordered online.

Saki is best read in such weather as we're having now.  With a nice cup of tea, with lemon, not milk, and certainly without sugar, though a drop of whiskey wouldn't do a bit of harm on a day like this.

My Annual (Library of America, etc.) Orgy

Every year, not unlike Christmas, our Employee Shopping Days roll around again (thank you management,) and, while I always intend to use this opportunity to buy edifying books for widows and orphans, I instead indulge myself in an orgy of entirely selfish consumerism.  True, I bought a single title, as a token to assuage my guilt, for my partner: Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South, by E. Patrick Johnson, but everything else was for me.

And, as I do every year, my first priority is always to add to my collection of the complete Library of America.  I've been collecting this series since they started publication, many years ago.  Every year they publish four or five new titles, so I have to get those too.  Doesn't matter if I like the authors.  Doesn't matter if I will ever read the individual volumes.  Gotta have 'em.  I look at it as an investment.  (These books are the only material goods specifically mentioned in my will -- no lie.)

If you don't know the series, Library of America publishes the classics of American literature and history in an ongoing project to preserve, promote and, I suppose, defend our cultural heritage.  It is an admirable undertaking and done superbly well.  The books are beautifully made, of durable materials, and meant to "last a lifetime."  They will certainly outlast me (thus the provision in my will.)  As a collector, they are my pride & joy.

As a reader, some years are better for me than others, the worst being the year I had to buy Kerouac, Alcott, and Lovecraft.  Very little joy there, I can tell you.  But I did my duty.

This year has been (for the most part) happier:

Collected Stories and Other Writings, by Katherine Anne Porter.

This goes to the top of my night-stand reading pile as soon as I

finish with my reading for my Christmas Readings this year.

Collected Poems: 1956 - 1987, by John Ashbery.  A favorite of my dear friend Richard, himself a poet, and someone to

whom I will now be forced to pay more serious attention.

 

Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s, by Philip K. Dick.  This purchased reluctantly and soon to be added to my shelf

of LIAM acquired "more in sorrow..." titles.

I'm disappointed not to be able to add the second volume

of A. J. Liebling to my collection, as, for some unknown

reason, it seems never to have arrived, either at the bookstore or with the

distributors, despite a September publication date.

Finally, (although tomorrow is another Shopping day, as Scarlett might say nowadays,) I rounded out my selection with a beautiful remainder about the great director Jean Renoir, and two handsome volumes of essays by George Orwell: Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays, and All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays, both compiled by George Packer and attractively produced.

Santa has already been better to me than I deserve.

"If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without truffles."

The above is a quote from Colette. The other day we bought a stack of used paperbacks by same. (It is a sad and sorry day when the only way to get a stack of Colette is to buy used copies, but let that pass.) These paperbacks are not in perfect shape, but there are titles I haven't seen for years. Someone sold her whole collection of Colette, and some titles had simply been read and reread too often and threatened to fall apart in my hands as I took them from the box. These, with regret, I had to return. But even the survivors can't be sold for much.

I've decided that that is a good thing. Think of finding Colette for the first time, of meeting Sido or Claudine for the first time! At only a dollar or two per book, anyone can discover a great writer.

If you don't know, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28, 1873 -- August 3, 1954) was the greatest modern French writer after Proust and one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century(though born in the 19th, with the morals of the 18th.) She is also witty, amusing, warm-hearted and, as the Brits would say, "dead sexy."

So look for these slim volumes, new or used, when next you're in the bookstore.

I'll close with another quote:

"I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it."

Amen.