Newly Arrived: THE SOUL OF SLEEPING BEAR

 

This beautiful new book of photographs of the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore has text to match the images' beauty. The covered bridge on the book cover invites you in! 

Both text and photography are by Mark Lindsay, and books in the shop now are signed by Mark. Perfect for Fathers Day, coming up next month. 

Local and Signed Books Make Special Gifts

From Traverse City -- chickadees!

When restocking Bill O. Smith's latest book, A Chickadee Year, I also restocked Chickadees in December. Doesn't that make sense? So glad to have Bill's beautiful, educational, and very entertaining -- fun! -- books in my shop!
 

From Cathead Bay -- new perspective --

"Wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger," the angel told the shepherds. But where was that manger? Author Gary Ross brought imagination to add to the research he did into the Bible story to offer a new perspective on the birth of Jesus.

From Leland, magic and the moon for kids --

Artist, musician, and writer Tobin Sprout has redesigned and reissued two of his lovely children's books in time for the holidays. Elliott is a story about magic and where we find it, while little Tinky works hard to figure out how to "put the moon to bed." 

Why fight crowds in Traverse City when you can shop in your own little village? No traffic snarls, plenty of parking...

(See? Plenty of on-street parking available!)

...and on Saturday the horses will return! 

Horses in the snow

Horses in the window

Newly arrived in the shop!

Re-Opening July 1

Author Robert Giles came in Saturday morning to sign copies of his book, When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later (see my review here). A couple copies are being held for customers as special orders, but I have more available, so contact me if you're interested.

Emita Hill came in earlier in the week to sign her Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women in Food and Farming, and copies of that book (my review here) have been so much in demand that I'll be ordering another carton for July, but I have a few still available now.


So now, the plan as July looms is THIS: 

The bookstore will re-open officially on Wednesday, July 1 (at present I am only taking deliveries and allowing customers to come in to pick up special orders), with these COVID-19 precautions: 

(1) You must wear a mask. I will not be providing masks, as you should all have your own already to be out in public at all. 

(2) Number of people in the store at once will be limited to six. If you are part of a large group, plan accordingly.

(3) Hand sanitizer will be available, and its use will be encouraged as you enter and again as you leave.

For now, this Saturday, June 27, book-hungry people without special orders to pick up may browse the sidewalk cart, where a wide variety of books are available (as are bags). The price there is $9.43 for three books, which works out to $10 with the sales tax. I will continue the cart throughout the summer for sidewalk perusal and for the special comfort of those not yet ready to go into stores.

I thank you for your loyalty and for your patience and hope we can all manage to have a safe, healthy, fun- and book-filled summer!

It Doesn't Have to be Fancy to be Exciting

This is not a fancy book at all. It doesn’t even have a dust jacket. Really, I plucked this particular hardcover story-version of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors (“This narrative adaptation by Frances Frost preserves the exact dialogue of the opera”) out of a box with interest only because the illustrator, Roger Duvoisin, has been a favorite of mine since my son was little and we discovered and enjoyed his Petunia books together. Illustrations in Amahl are not as loosey-goosey as other work by Duvoisin, but the bright colors are definitely his. Anyway, a nice little Christmas book, right?

Musing over what would be a reasonable price, I turned the first leaves almost idly. Publication date was 1952. It was the half-title page, though, that stopped me in my tracks. What were all those names? Each in a different handwriting? None was Menotti’s signature or Frost’s or Duvoisin’s….

I’m not an opera aficionado. I had to look up the names. David Aiken: operatic baritone. Andrew McKinley: operatic tenor. Rosemary Kuhlman: mezzo-soprano. All three were in the original 1951 cast of Menotti’s opera, which was also (written in English) the first opera written for television, commissioned by NBC and broadcast as the first production of the television’s Hallmark Hall of Fame. First Hallmark, first television opera, original cast members — well, now I am very excited! In fact, I can hardly believe what I’m holding in my hands! Since the publication date was 1952, maybe the other names were in the cast of that year’s production? Thrills like this are part of the adventure of dealing in used books. I haven’t decided on an asking price yet. This is a one-of-a-kind item, not something with a lot of “comparables,” but I know the right buyer would be over the moon to have it. What a Christmas present it would make, eh?

Some News Not "New"

Our bookshop opened in July of 1993 with only used books. We added new books to the mix a few years later and have gradually increased that inventory, offering not only new books but also personal appearances by authors, this year a dozen round dozen of them in eleven Thursday Evening Author events (see sidebar). A curated collection of used, rare, and out-of-print books is still, however, the backbone of our business, and in that spirit I offer today the following:

SILENT SEASONS: TWENTY-ONE FISHING STORIES BY THOMAS McGUANE, WILLIAM HJORTSBERG, JACK CURTIS, HARMON HENKIN, CHARLES WATERMAN, JIM HARRISON & RUSSELL CHATHAM, edited and illustrated by Russell Chatham. Book design by Russell Chatham, Anne Garner, & Jamie Harrison Potenberg. 215pp. Livingston, MT: Clark City Press, 1988, 1st printing, Oct 1988.  Softcover with dust jacket. Illegible inscription on half-title page. Jim Harrison signed on title page next to his name (his the only author signature on this page). Near fine condition. $150

 IN OUR TIME, by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s Second Book: A Facsimile of the 1924 Paris Edition Which Was Limited to 170 Copies. The 1977 facsimile edition was published with the permission of the Hemingway Estate and limited to 1700 copies. Lightest of wear to spine ends; dust jacket pristine. $400

Mr. Rochester Came Back!

Not that he ever left Northport or Dog Ears Books since our big launch in May of 2017, but Sarah Shoemaker’s novel, Mr. Rochester, my bestseller of 2017, is now out in paperback. And I have signed copies available! So attention book clubs: Read both Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre and double your discussion fun!

Here I must digress to share a story someone told me in the bookstore last week. A customer browsing the dog books read aloud the title, Bad Dogs Have More Fun, and I couldn’t let it pass without a remark. I said I was skeptical. After all, there aren’t many places you can expect a welcome for a badly behaved dog, while a well-behaved dog can enjoy many more aspects of life with its resident human beings. The woman agreed. Then she told me that her family had once had such a bad dog that they spoke of the dog to each other as — not, I think, its given name — Mrs. Rochester. “Because,” she went on to explain, “whenever we had company, we had to lock her upstairs.” 

Sarah Shoemaker, what do you think of that?

Mr. Rochester

by Sarah Shoemaker

Paper, $14.99