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devoured a good book lately?

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Finished reading The Complete Guide to Strating Used Bookstore, by Dale l. Gilbert, with certain inklings in mind. Quite a nice little book (it's a slim volume), and I'm not surprised how many bookshop owners I've spoken to say they read it whilst starting out, even if they ended up not following it to a T. Certainly I'd have to say this is the best book on the subject so far I've read which dealt with all the "nut & bolts" of the issue, down to how to build your selves for your stock in order to save some money. But far from being a penny-pincher, Gilbert is adamant other times when he feels you should not cut corners.

And I would personally have to admit that when I start my own bookshop I will probably alter his plans somewhat. But it will be on my head should I do so, since he did warn me.

For all of you who didn't rush out immediately and buy Dr. J. Rutgers' How to Attain and Practice The Ideal Sex Life, it's now for sale through my eBay store. Be sure and get it. Your spouse will thank you. No really.

I believe this is very worthwhile. However, I am also of the blog generation where we hide in plain sight (or plain site as the case may be). Thus I have every intention of listing just about everything I check out from the library. Congress can come after me if they'd like. Perhaps I can lend them the copy of Yobgorgle I just checked out. They might learn a thing or two. Then Dan Quayle and I will go read Mr. Popper's Penguins again.

PS Also, just so none of my subversive deeds go unnoticed, I also bought a copy of Saint-Exupery: a biography by Stacy Schiff, which is a biography (apparently) of the guy who wrote Le Petite Prince which, upon further investigation, I discovered was French! Thus my subversiveness is complete. I have allied myself with the French (sorry, the freedom) persons and thus have joined the anti-Americans. I await my investigation. Can Federal investigations be blogged?

Whilst browsing in the old book store downtown, I came across (for only $1 yet) what might be the perfect book, namely How to Attain and Practice the Ideal Sex Life, published in 1940 by Dr. J. Rutgers. As far as I can tell "Dr. J. Rutgers" is the author's actual name. His mother just thought "Dr. J. Rutgers" sounded good.

Now, the brilliance of this book is that when you turn it one way it could be an adventure story of a noble explorer on the frontier's of human experience; yet turned another (and consumed perhaps with a cup of very hot tea or hot chocolate) it is a better soporific than a sleeping pill. To be honest I'm not sure what it's even about, other than what is revealed by the title, due to the deliberate, and indeed systematic obfuscation enacted by the progenitor's own prose. Yea, a sample:

We might represent the passion-curve by a zig-zag line which falls suddenly below zero, but rapidly rises again. Through impure sexual intercourse, the curve falls from disgust so far below zero that one wishes to change the object of one's passion with every new rise of the curve. In pure, more ideal love, however, the curve approaches more and more to a constant straight line; even in marriage, both parties should reflect that after every connection their mutual love should blossom afresh; every time a fresh bud that bursts into a more lovely flower than before (Chapter 28, Social Restrictions on Sexual Intercourse).

Which, needless to say, got my blood pumping, since nothing screams romance on St. Valentine's Day than graphing one's passionate concupiscence (wink wink nudge nudge). But look at that burst of poetry at the bottom! There you are, turn it another way and it's a volume of poetry; love poetry at that!

Although Dr. J. Rutgers was supposedly a leader in the new awareness of sexuality and the acceptance of birth control; I think at its heart this book is about abstinence. Because, at least in my case, by the time I was doing picking through it I realized what a vast and utterly complicated world sex actually was and decided I would do something more spontaneous and passionate...like perhaps rocket science. Incidentally, for those working on their graduate degree in sexuality, this book is in print again.

PS Hey, wait a minute, could "buds bursting anew" be innuendo? Dr. J. Rutgers, Happy Valentine's Day, you old dog you!

Quickly re-read Lizard Music which is another I do that to from time to time; and, to paraphrase Beetlegeuse, it keeps getting funnier, every single time I read it!!

Except I suppose funny isn't the correct way to describe any of Pinkwater's stuff, although it certainly is funny at times. It's funny strange and funny haha, which is a nice trick if you can do it. Most can't. I think Pinkwater would have to even if he didn't want to. Anyhow, this is still one of my favorite books. Came across this particular edition for 50 cents at a Goodwill store. Was pleased that it's still around and circulating. Now if we could only get them to re-release Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy in hardback...


"I saw you on the bus too," said the Chicken Man, "Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Well, I wasn't exactly looking for anything."
"Yes, but did you find it?"
-- Lizard Music, D Manus Pinkwater

PS Does anyone else remember him going by "Daniel M Pinkwater" originally? Did he switch to his middle name or has he always done that and I've just been too wrapped up in myself to notice (with apologies to Douglas Adams, of course).

Th is, of course, a great loss to the book community. While Benchley was, perhaps, not exactly the greatest writer of the century, he was an utterly readable one, which is more than can be said for a good many technically better writers.

Besides, he was partly resposible for the fact that in eighth grade I wanted to be a shark hunter when I got older. Come to think of it, perhaps that would have been a better direction to go after all.

Anyhow, requiescat in pacem Mr. Benchley. How come they never talk about the sharks and the seals lying down together in heaven?!

It's full of quite nice anecdotes about the adventures of Collin and his wife and son as they attempt to emigrate from the U.S. to the UK (Wales specifically) and settled in the small "book town" of Hay-on-Wye, which has over forty bookstores in a rather small village. They also made up their minds to purchase an "old" house, which in the UK means at least three or so hundred years old; quite the taller order than an "old" 100-year jobber over here across the pond. Perhaps needless to say (although I was definitely disappointed) they do not eventually purchase the 400-year-old money pit (or well, pile of stones) called "Sixpence House" which used to be a pub and is now, well, largely a pile of stones. The adventure is the important thing, however.

Although I at times dislike Collins' judgementalness (he's highly educated and quite liberal either of which would induce one to judgment...both together make it inevitable). Examples include his rather brusque statement that a character in a book one is writing could no more "take" over the story than (I believe it was) cumin could take over your cooking. This, of course, puts him at odds with such great writers as Tolkien, Lewis, Coleridge and, well, pretty much everyone else.

There is also the part where he talks about how bad other parents are for evil things like not allowing their children to run in front of strangers and having them wear harnesses so they won't run into the street, presumably to be squashed by lorries. The nerve of some parents! Making it equally confusing, this is expressed somewhere close to the story of how his own son "accidentally" smashed his own toes with a heavy iron gating that he shouldn't have been able to lift; as well as the apparent fact that Collins' mother had him wear such a harness when he was young, which, um, I suppose means he's actually insulting his own mother.

Okay, well that went far more Freudian than I had intended; so I'll just go on to say that any memoir or journal type book that is honest will include very personal statements that make the narrator look poorly at times. But this is the mark of honestly and so such incidents can be forgiven. If you publish a memoir and you never look bad in it; you're probably not really trying hard enough, or you haven't lived fully enough. All great memoirists, er...okay let's go with diarists, look bad a good deal of the time (how are the testicles today, Mr. Pepys? Good to hear.)

All in all though, a very good book and I am extremely jealous about not being an expert in obscure literature. So Mr. Collins, if you stumble across this blog, um, please ignore all the bad things I said and hire me as an assistant. I'm good at obscure. Really!

A friend of mine gave me this for my birthday and I just finished reading it. Became boring at times, since much of it was concerned with his daily chores, etc., but it did hit me how similar the diaries of "great" people often are to the rest of us "typical" people. Perhaps that's why I like reading diaries and letters. I prefer them to actual memoirs since 1. they tend to be written during or shortly after the events they describe and thus probably report them a bit more accurately, and 2. they often aren't intended for publication as are many memoirs, and so, again, they tend to be a bit more honest.

If you like Lewis' work, however, and want more of a window into how his early life was, give this a look.

So I managed to get a copy of Augustine's Confessions from a fellow Bookcrosser and have been reading it. He's a very brilliant and lyrical writer, whatever else you can say about him. Of course I'm the person who most liked John Calvin's works when I was going through seminary, so take it with a grain of salt. But I find Augustine is widely criticized and not very widely read. His later stuff I think was more polemic and pigeon-holed, but his earlier writings are quite lovely.

Perhaps I just like him because he was a rebellious, reasonably intelligent youth who argued a lot. He argued with God a lot too, later. So I suppose I can relate to the guy. Of course he was later seized and unwillingly made a priest, but then he also wasn't in the Episcopal Church. Saint Augustine would never have made it through the discernment process.