This Saturday!

 

Dog Ears Books will be open 

from 11 a.m. (or earlier) 

until (at least) 5 p.m.

Come see what's new 

since your last visit.

Before Memorial Day -- Made It!

 

Sunshine, sparkling water, blooms and blossoms and boats. Northport is definitely the place to be as May's undecided weather settles down to perfection for the holiday weekend. This Saturday, don't forget, is our village's annual Cars in the Park.

And Dog Ears Books in Northport will open for the 2023 season on Friday, May 26, the first day of our 30th anniversary year! There may be a little lingering dust here and there, as well as wonderful items not yet out of boxes (let alone priced and shelved), but we'll be here to greet and supply you with reading material both Friday and Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. of this holiday weekend.

Blossoms and blooms and boats and books. What else could your little heart desire? 

Seasonal Closing

 

October is the last month of business for Dog Ears this year!

The bookstore closing is only seasonal, not permanent. I will be back before next Memorial Day to celebrate my 30th year in business (1993-2023), but at the end of this October 2022 I'll be closing until May 2023 for my seasonal retirement. I plan to remain in contact over the winter through my main blog, Books in Northport.

Because not everything on my to-do list can be accomplished on Sundays and Mondays, starting next week the bookstore and gallery will only be open Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. That is, Wednesday, Oct. 19, through Saturday, Oct. 22, and then Wednesday, Oct. 26, through Saturday, Oct. 29.

Thank you for 29 years of bookselling and a gratifying 2022 season. I look forward to celebrating three decades next summer in Northport. 

It Isn’t Rocket Science

Here until the rest of the month

Bookselling, my calling in life, doesn’t require knowledge of higher mathematics, let alone astrophysics, but there are crucial numbers involved in the survival of any bookstore, numbers that can also be called simply “the bottom line.” A recent article in the weekly Northern Express relayed the sad news that Traverse City’s 50-year-old Bookie Joint on Union Street is closing – not due to the owner’s desire for retirement but because the dreaded bottom line figure wasn’t panning out. 

Sad news!

“I was robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said the current owner, who bought the business fifteen years ago. “And Peter was going broke.”

 

The 50-year mark is one I don’t expect to see for myself (as a bookstore owner), but the 30-year mark is only two years away and very do-able, I think. At times in the past I’ve attributed my business success (survival, I suppose would be the more modest word) to stubbornness, but stubbornness alone wouldn’t have kept the door open for the past 28 years. 

People buying books in the bookstore – that is the essential ingredient for keeping a bookstore alive. Not mere compliments or wishes of “good luck” from browsers as they walk out the door. People buying books. That keeps a bookstore in business. 

The end of October is coming up fast, and Saturday, October 30, will be the last day of my 2021 season – but we will be back again in May of 2022 because of all our dear, wonderful, loyal book-buying customers! So please, all of you, know that I am grateful beyond my puny words for your patronage. Still --

 

Thank you 

from the bottom of my heart 

for a wonderful 2021 bookstore season!!!

Food Today; Medicine and Science Over a Century Ago

COVID-19 has changed the bookstore landscape this summer, all over the world. Since my Thursday Evening Author series here in Northport was cancelled, I have been neglected this particularly bookstore-focused blog. Bookstore news? The bookstore is open, and we have books – that’s pretty much my news, one week after the next. 

But there are always surprises from one day to the next, and if you haven’t been here since last year there are probably a lot of surprises. 

New This Season

First I want to highlight what I have christened my “Book of Summer 2020,” Emita Hill’s Northern Harvest: Twenty Women in Food and Farming, that book at the top of today's post. And you don’t even have to be a foodie or a farmer to love it, either. It's enough to want stories of real women, of their dreams, how they made them come true, and how they have made the food landscape healthier and more interesting for all of us Up North.

100 Years Ago

But I always have plenty of old books, too, and today I want to highlight a couple from 100 years ago. Both have to do at least in part with physiology, so that either would make an unusual and fascinating gift for someone in or graduating from medical school.

Beautiful Womanhood: Guide to Mental and Physical Development, with a copyright date of 1904, was written by three physicians: S. Pancoast; C. B. Vanderbeck; and Wm. Wesley Cook. The title page notes that the book is “Superbly Illustrated.” Many of the illustrations, even the photographs, are very romanticized, while others get beneath the skin to a graphic depiction of bodily organs. The chapter on testicles is somewhat surprising, in that women do not possess testicles, but of course the whole purpose of women a century ago (as the authors saw it) was to bear children, which is where those wiggly little spermatozoa came into the picture. 

Going now back to a copyright date of 1895 (my copy, an edition and printing from 1919, still 101 years old), we have Search Lights on Health: Light on Dark Corners. A Complete Sexual Science and a Guide to Purity and Physical Manhood. Advice to Maiden, Wife, and Mother, Love, Courtship, and Marriage. (And you thought subtitles were something our generation invented?) Here I think we have greater truth in advertising: Ladies, you need to know about sex! Here it is! And courtship, too – not just female “development” – so table manners are included, as well as advice on feelings such as jealousy. “Improve your speech by reading,” advises another page. Like Beautiful Womanhood, the book illustrates physiology and family, sexual organs and life lessons -- some of the which are still timely today. You'll have for yourself to decide which ones.

Leading Up to Indie Day

First and last prose books from Jim Harrison

The official date for Independent Bookstore Day in the United States (second annual) is this coming Saturday, April 30. I have all kinds of wonderful books in stock -- new, used, new ones just in, used ones newly arrived -- but I want to feature just a few on this post. No explanation necessary for the Harrison feature, I trust. 

My other featured fiction this week, leading up to Saturday, is L. E. Kimball's Seasonal Roads. You can follow the link to read my review on Books in Northport. 

Nonfiction feature will be the book from my previous post here on Northport Bookstore News, The Trails of M-22.

Featured children's books are one from just down the street, Flight of Megizzewas, and three from Kalamazoo -- The Flying Pie Book; The Best Bet Pet Book; and The Wings and Things Airplane Book.

Inauguration Day

This is the first post of what will be a much less wordy blog than my original (and still lively) Books in Northport. Here goes! Post #1:

Today's news is a book that just arrived, moments ago, hot off the presses, right in time for our long-awaited spring hiking season. Definitely a must for the Up North home library, a great gift for hostess or guest or to mark a vacation or anniversary or -- the list goes on.

I'm happy to note that while M-22 trails are the main thrust of the book, the author went out of his way, into and through Northport, to include trails between our village and the end of the peninsula. I particularly love the way each map shows elevations, so you can see at a glance how much climbing you'll be doing.

The Trails of M-22: 40 of the Most Beautiful Paths Along Michigan's Most Beautiful Highway, by Jim DuFresne, is going to be a sizzling hot seller this summer in Leelanau bookstores! The price is good, too -- $19.95, and it's in full color, produced and printed in Michigan!