Join the Holiday Crowd
May 3, 2009

I’ve never been one for confining favorite holidays to one official day. I like stretching Christmas Day out for the entire month of December by walking downtown to enjoy the lights and music, attending concerts, going to parties, sipping spiced cider, wrapping gifts. My Thanksgiving takes place over four days, not one of them spent in a mall or shopping online. Instead I indulge in the big dinner preparations, eat cold turkey and cranberry sandwiches over the long weekend, make turkey stock at my leisure, and read in a manner befitting my new tradition, the Great Thanksgiving Weekend Read. My birthday is always cause for a couple of weeks of fun and celebration including lunches and dinners with special people in my life and a trip to my local independent bookstore.

And now there’s a new kind of holiday. Perhaps not a holiday as much as a Day of Recognition that I think would make a fine holiday: Buy Indie Day. In other words, go and buy a book  (hardcover, paperback, audiobook) at an independent bookstore.

Why do this? Well, the obvious reason is to help the stores that love to help readers. But from my perspective there is at least one more reason: to discover or re-discover the unique experience that you get from physically browsing bookstore shelves and seeing (and fondling) the books in person. It’s a sensual experience—even the New Yorker picked up on that—that no online store, however good, can reproduce. 

Remember too that Mother’s Day arrives next Sunday, May 10. What better way to please her than to buy her a book you know she will love and spend some time reading it together? (I’m assuming she is a reader because you are one.) I already have my mom’s: a lovely book on the art in the White House. But don’t go to the bookstore just to buy. Go to have The Experience. Talk to a bookseller while you are there. Look in one or two sections you rarely or never look in just to see something different. Don’t rush yourself. Browse in the fullest sense of the word. Pick different books up. Feel their covers. Read a couple of pages in half a dozen or so. Open up a brief conversation with another browser even if just to ask if she or he has any personal recommendations. Test your math skills by trying to figure out how many books there are in the store. Most of all, discover the pure joy that comes with putting your personal stamp on a holiday of someone else’s making. And since you will be reading this after the official day, do what I do and spread it out. Make your “Buy Indie Day” any day this week that works for you!   

Upcoming Book Festivals:
These only one book festival coming up next week, and Ohio is the lucky state. From May 6-8, Ohio University in the city of Athens will be holding its Spring Literary Festival. Five visiting writers—Peter Ho Davies, David Shields, Maggie Nelson, Kim Addonizio, and David Kirby—will be presenting lectures and reading throughout the day and evening on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. An additional treat is the closing reception.

The Pub House:
Oak Knoll Press (along with its partner, Oak Knoll Books) specializes in old and current books about books about “book collecting, book selling, bibliography, libraries, publishing, private press printing, fine printing, bookbinding, book design, book illustration, calligraphy, graphic arts, marbling, papermaking, printing, typography and type specimens plus books about the history of these fields.” (Oddly, though they have books about bookplates, they have nothing about bookmarks.)    

But you’ll also find some surprises here. The Despain Papers, for instance, is a bibliophile’s mystery based in the 1930s and involving a rare book dealer seeking the answer to the disappearance of important papers of a British traitor who flew to Germany to join the Nazis. Among his travels is a trip is Kenya where “the Wanhohi river ran with cocktails and Cocaine was taken like snuff in the Happy Valley.” Another offbeat one, and this one intrigued me enough to buy it, is Lunacy and the Arrangement of Books. I have spoken often enough of arranging my books. This 24-page book composed of a single essay will give me the opportunity to explore the categorizing and shelving idiosyncrasies of book collectors down through the centuries.

They publish around thirty-five books a year, many in conjunction with important museums, libraries and associations. Their prices are reasonable, and the designs of the books are, not surprisingly, beautiful.

Of Interest:
This is different—and oddly appealing even though I rarely read mysteries. The Liquid Bookmark is designed to look like dripping blood (the red one, of course). It’s rather a shame you have to buy all three at once because I would probably buy the red for just that purpose. Still, if you are or know a passionate mystery reader this might just make a great Christmas gift. (It’s never too early to shop in my book.)

This Week . . .
Ephemera is the name of a fun blog. It’s about ephemera, of course, defined as something of no lasting significance, though today it generally refers to paper items (bookmarks, bookplates, posters, postcards, tickets, broadsides, posters, etc.) that were originally meant to be discarded after use. (It also encompasses photographs, menus and other items that while not meant for short-term use, nevertheless possess the fragile characteristic of their brethren. Ironically, that intent is what has made them so collectible.

Marty Weil, the author of this blog, shares his joy in the vast array of ephemera and their history. Whether he’s talking about carnival ephemera, record sleeves, Ottoman Empire documents, early Macintosh ephemera, or darn near everything else his enthusiasm is infectious. It’s a wonderful place to see and learn about things you might otherwise never have thought about.   
 
Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren