Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Islesboro art exhibit

2009-07-12T19:02:00.005-04:00

I'm island-bound again later this week, for a group exhibit with some terrific women I've been lucky enough to go on retreat with for a week each September, for the past three years. We paint, draw, write, eat, laugh a lot, walk, play Scrabble - but mostly just work hard on our own projects. Mine is usually plein air painting around the island. Islesboro is a beautiful place. Here are five of the paintings I'll have in this week's show, which opens on Friday evening at the Islesboro Historical Society:

These all measure under 12" x 16", though I am bringing a few larger paintings along for good measure. Meanwhile, on the book front, I'm almost finished reading Diary of an Art Dealer by René Gimpel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1966), and it's so good I've blazed through over four hundred pages in what seems like no time flat. Gimpel bought and sold some of the best art the world has ever had to offer, and his diary is gossipy and opinionated and intelligent and generous, and exhibits a deep love for art and artists and sympathy with their endeavours. The sections about meetings with Renoir and Monet are particularly fine, as well as his reminiscences of Marcel Proust, and his thoughts about Botticelli and Vermeer. Gimpel defined the truly great work of art this way: "To survive for all time is to express all the beauty contained in a certain place and in a fixed second of eternity." (p.329) Gimpel, the introduction tells us, retained his sense of honor and serenity even as his health broke in a German concentration camp, Neuengamme, where he was sent after being arrested for his part in the French Resistance. I am dreading the end of this book, knowing what's ahead. Because the writer did not, despite his trenchant political comments, and I want to call out to him across time, to warn him. Impossible and heartbreaking. I read on.

Bear Island revisited

2009-07-01T18:01:00.009-04:00

I thought I'd follow up yesterday's post with a few of the paintings I made last week on Bear Island. The first is a small view of the very end of a point I love, looking toward the neighboring island, which I also love, on the only day any blue was to be seen either in ocean or sky:

Next, the island boathouse with the very edge of the dock showing over on the left, and the beachstone road heading off to the rest of the island on the right:

One dripping foggy day so I took refuge on a porch, and painted the view out the screen door. The fog was brightening, and the green outside was very soft and vivid:

Once the morning rain was so heavy that I was stranded inside for several hours, and ended up painting the interior of my rental cottage. The woodstove, for which I was very thankful, and the view down a step into the tiny camp kitchen:

One more, a pocket beach at low tide (inaccessible at high tide, although you can look into it from above). This is part of the beach that used to be one of the island dumps, so the sea glass here is often magnificent. And the blue mussel shells always are. I think of this as treasure beach:

That's it, for now. Before I went to Bear, I finally purchased a digital camera - a nice little refurbished Nikon - it's a gem and is making it much easier to photograph my paintings as I make them. So I'll be adding more folders of work, and rearranging things in general, on my painting website soon.

I photographed a lot of work today, but really, this day was all about weeding the garden. I mean to say, where did those three-foot-high thistles come from? Well, at least the onion tops are also three feet high. I read more Constable, too, as a reward for all the hard work outside. He offers good advice about presenting oneself to the world (p.160):

"Take care that you launch your boat at the appointed time, and fearlessly appear before the world in a tangible shape. It is the only way to be cured of idle vapours and useless fastidiousness."

No fussing allowed, in other words. Be who you are. Advice I've been trying to follow all my life.

What I did on my summer vacation

2009-06-30T20:24:00.014-04:00

I can't let an entire month slip past in the fog without writing something here; old habits die hard, it seems. I just returned from a week on Bear Island - from one of my now-annual painting trips. This island is small, remote, rustic, quiet, terribly beautiful, and extrememly low-tech. As in, no running water, not much electricity (a few of the houses have some solar capabilities), outhouses, etc. No distractions, in other words, except for the tremendous natural scene which leaves me looking and looking and looking at every turn, and which serves as the ultimate distraction. Everything else falls away before it. I painted through the rain and fog which enshrouded the island for much of the week. I made use of covered porches on a few buildings, and open doorways, but mostly I was able to work outside between periods of precipitation. Here's a painting just barely sketched out - this is the harbor house, from my seat on the island dock:

I have my guerrilla painting kit there - just a palette loaded with paint, in a plastic case, and a waterproof bag with brushes and paint rags, and my raincoat to sit on. I also made some watercolors, again with a simple kit - enamel paint pan, water bottle, a favorite brush, a plastic bag to sit on or cover things up if necessary. After the relative intensity of oil painting, the watercolors are relaxing and fruitful - I love using them to feel out the contours of the land, and take note of the colors right in front of me. Pure color on white paper is a luxurious thing:

Weather aside - though I must mention that a friend asked me if I had moss growing on my north side, when I returned - I was truly happy in this environment. I sat and watched the fog come and go up and down the bay, for hours. Stunning. I mean, look at it:

By week's end I had completed thirteen oils and a handful of watercolors. I took a few books with me, also, just for some company (I was alone much of the week, both in my cabin and on the island in general). A dear 1950s British reprint of the Memoirs of the Life of John Constable continues to be a joy (thank you, Antony...), and I found reading it akin to reading a lost Jane Austen novel, what with his prolonged and beleaguered courtship, the moving love letters between himself and his betrothed, his struggles with the artistic status quo, his love of the natural landscape of his boyhood, and his determination to paint what he wanted to paint how he wanted to paint it. Much of the book is comprised of direct quotations from his letters, and letters from his friends to him. Fascinating and immediate stuff. On painting scenes he loves (p.86):

"As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight.... I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling..."

His feelings about nature and landscape painting ran deep at a time when the genre was practically nonexistent - other painters around him, in academic circles, were painting landscape by rote and imagination and sheer copying, not from direct observation in and of itself, as a complete subject. As a companion book to Constable, I also re-read much of Charles Hawthorne's Hawthorne on Painting (reprinted by Dover). Hawthorne conducted a plein air painting school in Provincetown for many years. This little book of instruction is a precious gem to me. Every time I revisit it, I find something relevant and new (p.19):

"Painting is a matter of impulse, it is a matter of getting out to nature and having some joy in registering it."

Which is just what I tried to do. I got out there. And the joy was surely present. I just hope it shows in my paintings, too.

Island Artists exhibit

2009-05-31T17:35:00.012-04:00

I just delivered two large (for me) paintings to the Courthouse Gallery Fine Art in Ellsworth, Maine, for a group exhibit opening on the 14th of June. The exhibit is entitled Island Artists: Fairfield Porter, Eliot Porter, the Porter Family, and the Great Spruce Head Island Art Week Artists and Poets. The Porters summered and still summer on this beautiful island in Penobscot Bay, and several years ago I was somehow lucky enough to attend their annual retreat for artists and writers. The experience was tremendous and still continues to resonate. This fine gallery has put together a curated retrospective about the island and its continuing influence on artists of all kinds.

So here are my two paintings - this first one is Double Beaches, Great Spruce Head Island, and measures 40" x 56". The view is of the west side of the double beaches, looking to the north at the other end of the island, and the mainland beyond:

The second is Path to the Double Beaches, measuring 38" x 48", and showing one of the many island pathways. Eliot Porter designed much of the trail system on the island, and it is still maintained by the family and checked on by the Nature Conservancy. In many places the spruce trees are encroaching and thick, and the feeling on some of these paths is of a decidedly eerie closeness:

So, there they are. I submitted smaller works too (most of my paintings are 18" x 24" or smaller), but these are the ones the curators chose. I made them this size because I wanted something I felt I could walk straight into. For me, they represent a bigness of feeling. Around sixty artists are in this exhibit - some I know well and many I've never met, so I'm looking forward to the opening, and to the accompanying poetry reading at the gallery in July. This island is a very special place (how special? read Eliot Porter's beautiful book Summer Island: Penobscot Country, Sierra Club Books 1966, one of my very favorite books about Maine, and find out for yourself), and I can't wait to see more representations of it.

Maine in May

2009-05-28T18:40:00.005-04:00

Now that May is nearly over, I find I need to make a list of the things that have brought me a particular bright joy this month, and as I do so, I see that most of them are country pleasures, still not used to living outside the city as I am, even after nearly two years: rain-drenched lilacs, violets in the grass, carpets of wild strawberry blossoms, three lady's slippers that Ryan spotted near a place we walk often (creamy white with faint pink veins - I haven't seen one since I was a child, and here are three), on a later walk in the same place a red fox trotting along the verge, back at home a few tentative wild turkeys crossing the yard, robins nesting in the cedars outside our kitchen door, onions sprouting their long green tops in tidy grids in the garden, down the street at the beach harbor seals lolling on seaweed-covered rocks as the tide falls, on the way home a red cardinal singing on a gray gravel driveway.

It seems that spring has been slower coming and more lush and green this year than in the past. Probably because I'm outside noticing small changes every day, and now the leaves are in full leaf and we've mowed the lawn four times already, and most of the garden is planted. And I've been out looking hard at the details, painting some of them, and afterwards, sitting in the sun reading more Ronald Blythe books, and day-dreaming. I'm nearly through his third Wormingford collection, Borderland (Black Dog Books 2005), and I see that his thoughts about a certain kind of spring day run parallel to mine (p.181):

"Once outside it is virtually impossible to go in again. All I want to do is lie where the sun can touch me. It reminds me of sprawling above the Atlantic in Cornwall when I was a teenager and becoming mesmerised by the blue tumult below, the regular biff of the water on rock, the crying seabirds, the hot sward, the thinking, 'Why ever go home? Why go anywhere?'"

On this side of the Atlantic, I could say the same. Oh, wait - this is home. (**glee**)

art, books, and bliss

2009-05-07T12:35:00.009-04:00

I had a lovely day visiting in Brunswick with my sister Emily last week. She lives near Bowdoin College, and we spent some time walking around visiting her favorite spots on campus. The Bowdoin Museum of Art has an exhibit right now called New York Cool (an appropriate play on words re New York School artists and writers), and one of the best things there is a collaborative series by artist Norman Bluhm and poet Frank O'Hara - abstract gouaches with poem fragments written in to complement them. I also love the immense Helen Frankenthaler painting, a big target painting by Kenneth Noland (who I don't usually respond to in a positive way, particularly, but this one has real presence and even beauty in it), a vibrant abstract Robert Goodnough painting that reminds me of nothing as much as shelves of books, and a big black Louise Nevelson sculpture that gives me chills and makes me think of the phrase dark matter. Lots to see there, some great, some not so much - the show is up through mid-July.

Next we wandered over to Hubbard Hall, the original library building. Em wanted to show me a room there. Unfortunately the room was closed, but the good news is we could peek through portholes in the double doors and see inside anyway. And what a room it is! The Susan Dwight Bliss Room, which houses the Susan Dwight Bliss Collection of Fine Bindings, among other things. Including antique French walnut woodwork and a sixteenth-century ceiling from a Neapolitan palazzo. Sigh. Truly a booklover's fantasy library come to life, and come to rest in Maine.

That was all very nice, but what really stopped me in my tracks was what I saw and read upon first entering the building. We didn't then know Hubbard Hall was the old library (the books are now housed elsewhere except for a few special collections), but we surmised as much when we read a large stone plaque on the wall in the entryway, which states the following:

"Books are not absolutely dead things but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are. / Who reads and reads / and does not what / he knows / is one that ploughs / and ploughs / and never sows."

The accompanying plaque reads, in part:

"This hall dedicated to truth and to books as the depositaries and teachers of truth is a gift to Bowdoin College from Thomas H. Hubbard Class of 1857 and his Wife..."

Reminders of some things we love (books, truth...). Then we walked across the quad and looked up at the window of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's room, when he was a student here. A small plaque on the exterior wall identifies it. And next, the sunlight through the stained-glass windows in the chapel, and some magnolias in flower on the way home. A day of art and books and sympathetic conversation. Bliss-full.

and now for something completely different

2009-04-21T12:37:00.004-04:00

My pals Mike and Dan, otherwise known as the Flannery Brothers, have a children's media company and are currently finalists in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest - congratulations, guys! Their great children's song about collecting is called One Wasn't Enough (we can identify with this, can't we), and I encourage people to listen to it and then register and vote here, under the children's category. Warning - the song is very catchy and it will be stuck in your head for a while after you listen - especially as you look around at all your stuff. Voting continues for the next week only; people can cast one vote per day if so inclined. Good luck, guys - rock on!

why i am not a novelist

2009-04-17T18:31:00.008-04:00

A lovely spring day here in Maine. In the morning I went outside to paint for a few hours and it was heaven. I've been struggling for the past few weeks while working indoors, so to be out painting from life again, looking out to sea, was just what I needed. What does this have to do with not writing novels? Nothing, except it had me thinking about creative endeavour in general, and I recently read, back-to-back, Housekeeping (Macmillan 1980) and Gilead (FSG 2004, 2005 Pulitzer-winner) by Marilynne Robinson. They both made me realize that I do not have what it takes to be the kind of novelist I would want to be, were I to be a novelist. (That is to say, the Marilynne Robinson kind.) Holy mackerel, her style and her stories are heartbreakingly wonderful. Beautiful sentences had me thinking, How...? How did she...? Who could think of that...? Of course I was happy to find bookish bits within each novel, too, such as this, from the main character in Gilead (p.39):

"...I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp."

Interesting realization about Gilead, after I read it - it takes the same form as another novel I love, Mark Helprin's Memoir from Antproof Case - that of a relatively old man who became a father late in life, running out of time for one reason and another, hence writing down his life history and instructions to his young son, a boy he will certainly never see become a grown man. Thus the story unfolds as the main character decides how much to tell, and when to tell it. Of course there are differences: Helprin gives us a picaresque world-wide adventurer, and Robinson, a quiet home-town preacher. But still, a very interesting way to tell a story.

In Housekeeping, the ending is hard and sad and I'm not sure if I am relieved for the main character or not. Either way, her fate is difficult. But In Gilead, Robinson allows the black sheep character to turn out ok, mostly, and it's frankly a wonderful relief, because I was expecting disaster the entire time, for everybody involved. All in all, it was a pleasure to read a major-award-winning novel I actually love (the past few years I have been underwhelmed, to say the least, whenever I've attempted such a thing).

So there it is. I now know I am not a novelist because I cannot be Marilynne Robinson. Luckily, I am a painter instead. And a writer of - what - something other than near-perfect novels.

journals vs. diaries

2009-04-15T16:27:00.013-04:00

I spent some happy hours last week scouring the local used bookshops for more books by Ronald Blythe, and the only thing I came up with was a hardcover first of his anthology The Pleasures of Diaries: Four Centuries of Private Writing (Pantheon 1989). Reading this book has only made me want to read about sixty other books (the ones he liberally quotes from), though I must say that the best parts of the book, for this reader at least, are his mini-essays about each of the diarists in question. And his introduction, in which he writes of himself (p.5):

"I cannot say that I am a diarist, being all fits and starts, inhibitions and sloth. Anyone reading my fragments would smell duty and effort at once. My addiction is to other people's diaries..."

Then again, many of his selections simply slay me. Almost all of them have me yearning for the complete work. Danger! I could end up doing nothing but reading his recommendations for the remainder of the year! Here's an example of what I mean, from the diary of 'Chips' Channon, early-to-mid-20th-century social gadfly and upper-crusty guy made good (p.289):

"19 July (1935). Sometimes I think I have an unusual character - able but trivial; I have flair, intuition, great good taste but only second rate ambition: I am far too susceptible to flattery; I hate and am uninterested in all the things most men like such as sport, business, statistics, debates, speeches, war and the weather; but I am riveted by lust, furniture, glamour and society and jewels. I am an excellent organizer and have a will of iron; I can only be appealed to through my vanity. Occasionally I must have solitude: my soul craves for it. All thought is done in solitude; only then am I partly happy."

That phrase in the book's subtitle, Private Writing, really gets right to me and lures me in. Blythe splits hairs by distinguishing between a diary, written for oneself only, or perhaps to particular person, and a journal, written with an eye to a possible (or certain) future audience, but in the case of this book, I like this distinction. It serves to emphasize the truthfulness of the diarist's experience - I mean an emotional truth as well as the factual, historical truth. Blythe also writes about the compulsiveness and relatively non-narcissistic natures of many diarists, tackling as they do "the Self.... Many are permanently intrigued by being alive and would set down their every breath were it possible." (p.4) Well. The book was a pleasure to read, and it was odd to write afterwards in my own diary/journal about it, transferring my favorite quotations in, the way I always do when I finish a book. Then write about it here, in in another kind of diary/journal. I've kept a written record of my life on and off since I was perhaps ten years old. I've always had a need to download my brain, as it were. It lightens the load, such as it is, considerably. Will anyone else ever read them? I have no idea. I used to call them diaries, then in college an art instructor called them journals - he had our whole class keeping them - he said every serious artist he ever met kept a journal of some kind, and he wanted us to follow suit. I'm grateful for that. It's given me a written record of my own working life, as a bookseller and painter. Not to mention various travails and joys (which usually do go unmentioned in life).

So, the upshot is I now have a list of published diaries to track down. And I'm also in the middle of reading an art book about the British landscape painter Constable. I was tending my book booth at the antiques mall earlier this week, and I realized I had a copy, so I brought it home. Constable, you see, lived right around the corner from where Robert Blythe now lives in East Anglia, and Blythe mentions him frequently in his essays. As my own painting progress is less than stellar at the moment (all fits and starts, inhibitions and sloth), I find I must retreat into art books for some news about other painters. That, and I saw two lovely small Constable landscapes at the museum in Boston last week. So, in the circular and intertwining way in which readers always come naturally to the next books they need to read, I find myself with numerous options.

This blog post has become far too long. I have to go write with a pen instead. But should I call it a diary (good enough for Pepys, good enough for me...?) or a journal (sounds too purposefully upscale...?). Either way, I scribble on.

country mouse

2009-04-08T11:12:00.006-04:00

Back from a few days in Boston. Frankly, I don't know how you city-dwellers do it. All the rush and bustle and hard pavement, all the beautiful people concerned with their clothing and hair and makeup and cars. (Which is not intended to disparage, but rather merely to say I feel like a total and absolute bumpkin amidst all the pretty shine and purposeful hurry.)

Brief highlights of my trip: standing in a certain spot in the Museum of Fine Arts and when I look to the left I see, through a glass door into a long white hallway, a huge Fairfield Porter painting of his sister sitting on the porch in Maine, and when I look to the right I see, in a lighted niche, a massive chunk of limestone from Persepolis, a lion attacking a bull, on loan from Chicago. I was so happy I was humming like a cello string. Another high spot: people-watching at the museum cafe over lunch. The man at the table next to me was elderly, beautifully groomed, impeccably dressed, and resembled no one as much as Peter O'Toole. Eyes not as blue, but still. I tried not to stare, but he was right in front of me.

A third high point - walking into Commonwealth Books on Boylston Street, going directly to the English history section, and immediately putting my hand on a hardcover first edition of Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village by Ronald Blythe (Pantheon 1969, $15). He is my latest reading obsession. A while back a reader of this blog suggested I take a look at his writing on rural living, Anglican church matters, and bookish bits of this and that - he publishes a column in the Church Times - and his first collection of these essays I got in the mail last week, finally, with the same title as his column, Word from Wormingford: A Parish Year (Viking 1997). So very excellent, such beautiful generous prose, in praise of nature, the holy, and the literate. I'm halfway through it already, and now his classic Akenfield is next on my reading list, to be followed by the umpteen other books of essays of his, and hopefully some of his short stories, if I can track them all down. Oh, and I must mention his new book, due out in June in the U.K.:

Need I say I am looking forward to this one... Did I mention that Blythe has been an editor for the Penguin Classics for ages? The pleasures of books are all through his essays. In fact, Word from Wormingford: A Parish Year begins with the sentence, "This is the calendar of a Reader who happens to be a writer." I don't know what's better than beginning to read an author one has never read before, knowing that said author has written around twenty other books. So today, I'm back from the city to the country, to watch spring arrive and READ.

Potboilers

2009-03-29T17:38:00.005-04:00

March is bare and muddy in Maine but I love it nonetheless. The colors suit me down to the ground, no pun intended. Ochre, spruce and cedar green, gray, the off-white of melting snow, dark red underbrush, blue sky. The first crocuses are open and the daffodils are up about an inch. Ryan and I have been boiling maple sap this month, something new for us. It's been a learning experience and another case of "next year we'll be a little better at it" - like the foraging and canning we did last fall. Despite some trial and error, we still ended up with a few half-pints of maple syrup with very different tastes, the first batch a bit woodsmoky, which I like, and the second a more straightforward classic syrup taste. Either way, we could eat it all with spoons, today, it's so good. If we were gluttons, that is. Instead I've been having it over my oatmeal in the mornings. And on our anniversary last weekend we had a pancake breakfast, with Maine wild blueberries from the organic farm up the road and our own syrup, not bad.

After keeping a little wood fire going outside all day, on a few different warmish days this month, we finished up the project by reading Noel Perrin's book Amateur Sugar Maker (University Press of New England 1972) aloud, over two consecutive evenings - I think I mentioned that we found a nice copy at a library sale this winter. All in all, a real pleasure, with some sweet leftovers. Next year will be even better because we'll actually know what we're doing.

Speaking of boiling pots, a good friend of mine 'fessed up recently to reading romance novels - the real bodice-rippers - and she was actually embarrassed, even though told me she was reading them because she'd simply had it with depressing heavy fiction. Now, potboilers have a long and varied history, and there's no shame in reading them, as I told her. Doesn't everyone have their own relaxation reading, their escapism, their particular brand of pure bookish enjoyment? I told her my Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart novels (in hardcover!) were something I used to be a little nervous about having "out" (for whom to see...? who would care...?), but now they reside on my bookshelves at eye-level, a spot of prime importance in my general shelving scheme. Because I really do love them, and I re-read them every two or three years, and I don't care who knows it. When I think of potboilers, I always think of Christopher Morley and his beloved detective novels. Not my cup of tea, but to each their own. Smoky or sweet.

Sorry for the dearth of posts this month. I've bought very few new (old) books, and most everything I'm reading is a re-read. I just finished Elizabeth David's journalism collection An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (Viking 1985) and am moving slowly through T.E. Lawrence's Selected Letters (Norton 1989). I'm also halfway through the Qur'an, but that's a long story for another day.

In another week I'll be in Boston. I'm tagging along while Ryan attends a conference for work, and I'm really looking forward to seeing some great art, the Venetian show at the MFA in particular - oh how I love Veronese - and perhaps even visiting a bookshop or two. Ryan is not running the Boston Marathon this year so this will most likely be our only spring trip. Which is fine with me - a bit of the city is all I need. Then gladly back home to ragged old Maine.

Saving daylights

2009-03-05T17:13:00.004-05:00

The sun felt warm today. I shoveled the path out to the compost pile again (three feet of drifted snow again) and then sat on the ramp on the south side of our garden shed, and when I closed my eyes it almost felt like spring. I'm ready, I don't know about you. The snow is still very deep in most places but is melting fast.

A bit of news - I have a painting in a large group show that opens tomorrow night in Belfast at Åarhūs Gallery. The show is comprised of works by artists living within a thirty-mile radius of Belfast, and part of the proceeds from sales at the show goes to food pantries within the area. Here's the painting - I made it last August on Mount Desert Island, standing on the ocean ledges near the base of Little Long Pond:

The tide was falling fast and the rocks looked very different by the time I'd finished painting. We had a great day that day - Ryan dropped me off to paint and then went running on the carriage roads nearby. Whenever I'm working in or near Acadia National Park, tourists will ask me where I'm from and I get to say Right here! with a big grin. Maine in the summer is almost as good as Maine in the winter, despite my grumblings about all the snow this year. And here comes daylight savings time, already. The crocuses will be up before we know it.

Tired old February

2009-02-26T14:38:00.004-05:00

Sorry I've been quiet here for a while. I'm busy at home painting, reading (of course), and feeling a bit mournful about my bookshop, at the same time that I'm so grateful to no longer be sitting there, mostly customerless, during a tough time of year in any economy, not least the current one. The good news: we finished our taxes, and I actually made money last year in the book business. This was largely due to the fact that I had a few tremendous individual sales, on top of paying much less overhead for the year. I wish I had more bookish news to report, but sadly, it's slow around here and I'd rather be silent if I have nothing of note to say.

I will mention that I read Three Cups of Tea a few weeks ago, during my month-long literary sojourn in Persia and Afghanistan. And then I found out that the co-author/subject of the book, Greg Mortenson, is giving the commencement address this spring at nearby Colby College. I think I'll go, just to hear him speak. This book, his life story, is such that after reading it, you think to yourself, This is living greatness. This is a person who starts with next to nothing and an idea and ends up creating new worlds for other people. Now, geniuses do this all the time, in all kinds of fields. But Mortenson does so selflessly, with no self-aggrandizing agenda, in a dangerous area, to help children, and specifically to help female children. During this contemplative slow time (winter in rural Maine - beautiful but getting old), this book about taking action in life was just what I needed. Apparently a lot of other people need it too, since I see it's been on the New York Times bestseller list for 107 weeks to date.

Another bit of good news - I sold my first few paintings thanks to my website. Just out of curiosity, if anyone is still reading this, I'd like to ask who among you has art on display in your home? Caveat - art not created and given to you by a close relative. Paintings, sculpture, illuminated manuscript pages (sigh...), objects for no other reasons than beauty and love. What do you have and why?

another January in the books, as it were

2009-02-01T14:08:00.009-05:00

I'm not one to wish time away - life is altogether too fleeting - but I do admit to feeling happiness, at least in a stolid yankee manner of being, that this long cold snowy January has finally passed by. I celebrated by ordering some seeds from Fedco today. Though looking out the dining room window toward the garden, or more accurately the area where I suspect the garden to be, when it is actually just a view of half an acre of pure white, is slightly disheartening. Well, all the more reason to plan for a wall of sweet peas for beauty, corn and potatoes and carrots and onions for winter storage, a huge basil patch for immediate greedy consumption, and nasturtiums by the kitchen door for cheer. I turned over a new leaf in my gardening journal, literally, by writing the first entry for 2009 today. I can hardly say what it means to me to tend a garden after twenty years of apartment living. After one full growing season, I'm nowhere near used to it. But we can settle on deeply satisfying.

In my book room, a tangled and sustaining garden of a different kind, I've been reassessing and sorting this month. Trying to hold on to some order. What with moving here, then moving the remnants of the bookshop here, some ossified layers seem to have mysteriously formed. It's a mess. And I can't stand untidy books. I'm firmly in the camp of good care and order. Anything less than that upsets them. (The books.) But the trouble is, as I'm working, I inevitably stop to browse and read among my old friends, and awaken an hour later wondering what I thought I was trying to accomplish in the first place. Yesterday I quickly gave up and took a short stack of books into the other room so I could comfortably sit and look at all the pictures again - at the top of the pile were three by Fitzroy Maclean: Back to Bokhara, To Caucasus, and The Back of Beyond (about Mongolia). I've heard that some people actually take vacations this time of year, to, you know, make more Vitamin D or something. But right now I can only travel in my books. So I'll toss another log on the fire, look out again at the snowy garden, and report that Samarkand is lovely this time of year.

the twilight zone

2009-01-24T16:59:00.005-05:00

Ryan and I attended yet another small winter-madness library sale this morning. It was a strange scene. We waited outside the door for a bit less than half an hour with a few other intrepid local dealers (hi Agnes and Paul), chatting and reveling in the warm weather. It must have been all of twenty-five degrees out, which compared to, say, ten, feels like spring right now. Then the sale opened and we all hurried into the room with the books. I started looking, and kept looking. I looked for a good five minutes before I put a single book in my tote bag. Me! And that book was a paperback. I thought about getting several decent cookbooks, but saw that they were priced at four dollars each, and then I noticed they were all faintly musty. No, thank you anyway. All the books at the sale were priced individually, in pencil, inside the front covers. The volunteers who spent hours doing this must have realized that their books are, in many cases, priced several times over what these same books could be bought for on Amazon. I don't know. But, I don't mean to be critical, because putting on a sale must be a hell of a task, and goodness knows I appreciate what I am able to buy, when I do buy.

More time passed, I had perhaps five books by now. Then Ryan came up to me, wearing a bit of a glazed look. He whispered, This is terrible... In the end, he found two books, I found nine, and I also threw in a few dvds. I was happiest to find Annie Lamott's most recent book of essays about faith, which I'd wanted to read all year but hadn't yet stumbled across a used copy. The only thing of value, though, was a dvd set of Fassbinder films from Criterion. Value in this case meaning resale value. As in I need to make some kind of a living here. I don't particularly want to be a dvd seller, but in this case I will bend, because the set is very nice and I don't happen to want to own it myself. It's easy to list on Amazon, and easy to ship. I also bought a Sigur Rós dvd. That I'll watch, then keep or sell, I don't know yet.

We left the sale feeling sad and a bit disappointed - usually there's something, some sleeper only we recognized, a signed book, something. It did feel like the twilight zone. It reminded me of walking into a used bookshop (now defunct) many years ago, years before my own shop, and I had that naturally hopeful expectation, an excitement dearly familiar to and treasured by booklovers of any stripe, that I would find something decent to buy - the shop hadn't been there long, they seemed to have a real inventory, somewhere north of ten thousand books. But as soon as I started looking around I got this terrible sinking feeling, and I slowly came to realize that there was nothing there for me. And I mean nothing. The inventory was tidy, and mostly hardcover, but up close it looked as if it had been assembled from the books left over from library sales like the one we attended this morning. So today it was déjà vu all over again. Well, that's one great thing about bookhunting - the wonderful anticipation never dies out, and we all dream of better luck next time.

Too much information?

2009-01-21T16:24:00.006-05:00

I voluntarily turned on the television yesterday for the first time in months. I wanted to see the spectacle in Washington, D.C., and feel like our country was about to make some sort of headway. I can't pin my hopes on one person, but I can witness that person's integrity and willingness to serve, willingness to sacrifice any chance of a normal life because that person believes he (in this case, a he) can change public policy at fundamental levels for the greater good. And I wasn't disappointed. The whole thing was very human and real, despite the grandeur. I ended up watching for a few hours. For what may be the last time for the foreseeable future, since we have a very old tv (one of my sisters got it for us at her recycling center, i.e. the dump) and have not gotten a digital converter box thingy, or a new tv. And don't plan to. Books, internet, radio, that's enough for now. There is such a thing as too much information. I came away from my afternoon of television and realized I'd missed real life, outside. The sun was already setting on a beautiful cold winter day. I felt a bit dazed, but happy to have seen this massive shift in political power for myself. Besides, I really enjoy the desultory chit-chat amongst news anchors and journalists while we all watch the scene together.

Ryan and I braved the cold and went to another small cabin fever friends-of-the-library sale last weekend, and came away with three boxes of books. A lot of new things to read, and much to attempt to resell. Nothing scarce or rare in the bunch, but highlights include a signed David McCullough first edition, a whole carton of decent Civil War history hardcovers, and a first in jacket of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which I later discovered had part of its title paged sliced away. Was it signed once, I wonder? Arg. I also picked up a copy of Heat by Bill Buford, and have now almost finished reading it. It's good - I love literature about food, and this is a pleasingly rambling narrative about the author's obsession with Italian cooking and the pressures of being an apprentice line cook at Babbo, among other things.

Nothing much else happening around here, except today I spent many hours stretching and gessoing canvases of various sizes. That's one great thing about painting - when easel-work isn't at your fingertips for whatever reason, you can always work at the other end of things, the prep work or figuring out what, exactly, should happen to what you've already made. Which in my case is piled up all over the place. Stacks and stacks of canvases. They do go quite nicely with the stacks and stacks of books. I appear to have a glut on my hands. What to do.

Winter work

2009-01-13T16:37:00.006-05:00

A fine midwinter day here in Maine, but it's cold and getting rapidly colder and another snowstorm is on the way tonight. I'm getting into a regular routine at home now, finally, after twenty years of up-and-out-the-door to go to work. Today, I did yoga in the morning, then worked on a small painting until I finished it, then took a long walk, saw a band of cedar waxwings pillaging frozen fruit off wild rosebushes, lugged in some wood from the woodpile, had a late lunch, and built up a fire in the woodstove. Hodge the cat napped throughout all of this activity. He's still napping, as a matter of fact.

My winter reading program still languishes. But I did finish Stendhal's Love a few days ago. Another note from his First Attempt at a Preface, which prickled my skin, it felt so much like he was speaking right to me:

"Poor disillusioned young woman, would you like once again to live through what engrossed you so much a few years ago, something you dared not mention to a soul, and which nearly cost you your honour? It is for you I have re-written this book and tried to make it clearer. When you have read it, never speak of it without a slight sneer, and thrust it into your lemon-wood bookcase behind the other books; I should even leave a few pages uncut, if I were you."

O that I had a lemon-wood bookcase. A wonderful book most useful for reminiscing about the old days, and whatever or whomever you loved to distraction. Books, a dangerously grand passion in my life, certainly. Otherwise, I'm not telling.

Now, I'm halfway through the collected Letters of Cézanne. The whole first section are letters from his friend Émile Zola, since his letters to Zola are now lost. A fascinating look at two incredible personalities when they were both young and dreaming of fame in their chosen professions.

Speaking of chosen professions, my new painting website is finally up. Hope you like it.

What's for breakfast...?

2009-01-07T10:09:00.003-05:00

I favor oatmeal myself, but here's a very funny story about imaginary breakfast cereal names for bookish households. Oedipus Chex and The Grapenuts of Wrath are my favorites. Trixie Beldens a close third, too funny... Thanks to Robert at RE-BOOKS for the link.

I've been working on my website...

2009-01-04T18:40:00.005-05:00

...all the livelong day. I've been working on my website, just to pass the time away. And now I have this song stuck in my head. I did read Stendhal for a few hours today (two-word review: delicious; heartbreaking) between other projects, not least of which was my painting website - I'm happy to say that sarahfaragher.com is imminent and I'm now searching around for inexpensive web hosting. Any suggestions? I'm leaning toward Host Gator, but would appreciate hearing from anyone who truly loves their host, so to speak. My web designer friend got busy with other projects, so I've been putting together this site on my own using a free template and some basic (also free) software, and it's all turning out kind of goofy but hey, so am I, so there it is. I hope to have the site up by this time next week, if the hosting search pans out. Suggestions welcome.

small winter library sales and their treasures

2009-01-03T15:45:00.006-05:00

We headed out this morning to a local booksale, and came home with a carton and a tote bag full, for thirty bucks and change. I am retraining myself not to buy general stock willy-nilly, now that I no longer have lots of places to stash extra stock. So we were choosy, but as usual I ended up with a short stack of new things to read, among them Bernd Heinrich's nature book about Canada geese, The Geese of Beaver Bog, a darling little first edition of Noel Perrin's Amateur Sugar Maker, about the mysteries of maple syrup, a nautical book from 1931 about the fishing industry, Mariners of Brittany, by Peter F. Anson (I love a fine nautical book, and this one may stay in our home library because some of Ryan's ancestors were in fact mariners of Brittany), two frivolous picture books about England and France, and a 1950s translation of Love by Stendhal - one of those authors who has always fascinated me, yet this fascination is unfounded because I've barely read a word he wrote. Nevertheless, I own a copy of his diary, something else I think is his collected journalism, his biography of Rossini, and now this. I opened it up this afternoon and read the author's First Attempt at a Preface (yes, there is also a Second Attempt at a Preface), in which he defends his choice to write nonfiction pieces in the first person by saying:

"I may be charged with egotism for the form I have adopted. But a traveller is allowed to say, 'I embarked at New York for South America. I went up to Santa Fe de Bogota. Midges and mosquitoes bothered me on the journey, and for three days I could not open my right eye.'"

Stendhal says he is a traveler on a "...journey into the little-known regions of the human heart..." and these journeys have taught him little, if anything, and:

"If he should be thought proud enough to believe otherwise, let him say that an even greater pride would have stopped him publishing his heart and selling it to the public for six francs..."

Hence:

"Since what goes by the name of success was out of the question, the author pleased himself and has published his thoughts exactly as they occurred to him."

Thank god. That sounds like something Montaigne would have said. Skimming around further in Stendhal, I see that chapter LX is entitled Concerning Fiascos. This is too good. Obviously I just found the next book I must read. That's how book-luck works, isn't it - if you regularly put yourself in the way of hundreds of books, the next ones to read always appear under your fingertips at the right times. Thus the autodidact continues her education.

Another Christopher Morley fan is born

2008-12-30T16:40:00.002-05:00

A new bookish blog is coming out of Cambridge, Massachusetts - Frognall Dibdin's Shelves - isn't that a terrific name! And it looks as if we've gained another Morley appreciation society member. Welcome to the club, it's small but has such depth... actually, kidding aside, if you spend much time at all reading books about books, Morley's name is bound to crop up in very short order. He knew so many book people in the first half of the twentieth century - booksellers new and rare, publishers, editors, authors, journalists, auctioneers, collectors, readers. A true man of letters. But I digress, as I often do. Welcome to the new blogger.

Book shopping at a chain

2008-12-24T14:34:00.008-05:00

Hi, I'm Sarah, and I spent some time near a mall yesterday, at the local Borders. Now I feel like I should go to the book-addict's version of AA. Is there such a thing? If not, can we please start one? (It would be called, of course, a chapter.) I can say, in my own defense, that I needed a few gifts that my local independent bookstores just didn't stock (and I also needed to buy packing tape at the Staples on the other side of the parking lot, and no, there is no local office supply store anywhere around here anymore). Borders. Essentially a mob scene, though an orderly one, because these are book buyers, after all. And how: people buying baskets full of books and dvds and what-have-you. A long wait in a long line to buy the three little things I came in for. I felt kind of sick afterwards, and I came out of there like a drunk staggering out of a bar. Then I got stuck in horrendous traffic. I don't know what I was thinking, being anywhere near a mall two days before Christmas. It was profoundly depressing to see all the rampant consumption and worse, to be a part of that rampant consumption. The holiday season was never like that in my little shop - and I don't think I would have liked it so much if it was, despite wanting to, you know, make a living and all. Well, at least a lot of people around here are getting books this year for Christmas.

Which is a very white one here in Maine this year - in fact, it's snowing again right now. Before the big snow came, Ryan and I went into the woods behind our house with a bucksaw and cut down a small balsam fir, then brought it into the house and decorated it sparingly, and now it's sending out its wonderful scent. I wrapped a few gifts this morning, some books included, went for a walk, lugged in some firewood, and thought about the meaning of the season. Endings and new beginnings, hope in the dark of winter. Giving. Receiving. Quietude. Not a mall in sight.

Blessings to you and your families.

The Lost Blog Posts

2008-12-09T16:03:00.013-05:00

I feel like I've really lost the knack for writing blog posts. I wrote some good ones in my head last month, but they never made it to the page:

Life at 58 Degrees (pre-woodstove)

Life at 72 Degrees (post-woodstove)

Don't Cut Holes in Your Roof as Winter Approaches, and Other Life Lessons

Serious Books by Funny Guys

Home is Where the Art Is

The titles will have to suffice. Instead of blogging, I'm spending time dealing with unfinished creative projects. Such as my bookshop memoir (which I thought was finished, until I, you know, closed the bookshop - and now I think I can write the real ending). Of course I say I am finishing my memoir, when what I really seem to be doing is utilizing that age-old distraction: reading. Reading other people's memoirs. I'm even reading books about how to write memoirs, instead of finishing my memoir. (I just read The Autobiographer's Handbook: the 826 National Guide to Writing Your Memoir, Holt 2008 - it's very, very good! I recommend it!)

In the Serious Books by Funny Guys category, I recently read Born Standing Up (Scribner 2007 - hey, a memoir!), in which Steve Martin offers the following advice:

"Through the years I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration." (p.80)

We need those delusions, don't we, if we undertake creative projects of any stripe. Otherwise, we can quickly come down with a bad case of what I call The Why-Bothers. I'm doing my best to fight them off.

Poking with a sharp stick actually works

2008-12-04T08:58:00.006-05:00

Ok, I've been hiding out. I am still here. I've been living in the physical world all fall, not so much in the internet ether. But Ian has tagged me and I feel obliged to respond to his kind prompts, and rejoin the party, as it were. Quote:

I am so sorry. So very sorry...but not so sorry not to inflict this upon you, too. Please consider yourself 'tagged':

You have been tagged. Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

End quote.

Now, one of my favorite painters (besides myself! I am truly so good!) was also recently tagged with this same set of instructions, but his friend added a new requirement - add an extra item to your list. A fake item. And see who can spot it for the dastardly deception it is. I'm using categories, because "random things" is too random for me. To make things difficult, some of these are two-parters. To wit:

1. Food: my favorite vegetable is the green and humble leek. Yum! My least favorite is the shiny and bitter green bell pepper. Blech!

2. Personal appearance: my hair is sort of naturally blondish/brownish, but has been all of the following colors: platinum blonde, black, and orange.

3. Literary habits: I have never read a book written by William Faulkner. I hear he's good, too.

4. Upbringing: I grew up in an old house with no running water. We had an outhouse out back. It was character-building!

5. Outdoor activities: sitting on a beach in the hot summer sun is true bliss for me. I can spend hours this way. And I have.

6. Musical taste: I secretly love ELO (Not so secretly now, I guess! Turn-to-stone, when you are gone, I...turn...to...stone...) and Eagles (Take it to the Limit makes me cry, and if someone really wants to know why, I will spill the beans).

7. Gamesmanship: My husband Ryan can usually beat me at Scrabble, wordy as I am. He has better pattern recognition than I do. I get too caught up in attempts at elegant and/or funny wordplay.

Can anyone spot the fake? Hello? Hello?? Is anyone still there? No? Oh, well, this was fun anyway.

I'm tagging Kate, Jonathan and Justine, Rachel, and I really can't think of anyone else who hasn't already been tagged. That's how long I've been out of the blog-world... aeons! (That, and all of a sudden everyone is on Facebook instead.)

Singing in the rain

2008-09-28T19:07:00.004-04:00

The hurricane took a right turn a few hours ago over toward Nova Scotia and is only going to glance our way, with rain and maybe 30-40 mph winds tonight. The tarps should hold. Knock on wood. We're staying up late just to be sure.

I re-read much of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men last night and remembered how much I intensely dislike many of the stories found therein. Regarding the subject matter, not the telling. I'm a modest person, and my face turns red if I read certain kinds of things, even if no one else is around. Well, as readers we don't get to pick and choose what our favorite authors want to write about, or are compelled to write about, do we. We have to take what they give us, and try to understand why they are telling us what they are telling us. I read on, red-faced.

I also re-read his short story Good Old Neon. I first came across it in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002 and hadn't forgotten it six years later. Still so good I wanted to cry.

So many true geniuses died early - Jack London, van Gogh, etc - after tremendous creative output in a relatively short time, and truly unique manifestations of their inner workings. But no getting maudlin, now. Plenty of geniuses live long and healthy lives. Must get back to tarp duty.