I have a lot of people (actually a lot is probably a stretch, let's try a few) who come in the store to buy cookbooks to read. Not in a search-for-a-recipe type of reading, but just to read, straight through, like a novel. 

It seems strange to me given all… Read full post »

When I'm not at the bookstore, I can usually be found looking for books. And once warm weather hits, one of the best places to find books is at garage sales. Which is a good thing, because I love garage sales.

I love not knowing what I'll come home with… Read full post »

I re-read one of my posts the other night and was surprised to see that the biggest word I used was eight letters long--not counting a few words with endings like "-ing," which would have brought me up to eleven. But that seemed unfair. The average was about five letters. I'm… Read full post »

Success in a used bookstore might be said to arrive when the number of books that go out the door surpasses the number that come in. I'm just not sure if that day ever arrives. So I've learned to define it a little differently.

Success is when someone comes in wanting… Read full post »

The day after our mom died, my sister and I sat at my kitchen table trying to write a eulogy for her funeral. We had written one for Dad 16 months earlier, but Mom's was proving difficult.

My sister rejected every one of my ideas. I rejected every one of hers.… Read full post »

Small towns are often thought of as bucolic places with wide open spaces and a slow pace of life that brings one closer to nature and nurtures down to earth values. And to a certain extent,… Read full post »

There's a brand of clothing called "Life is Good." They make T-shirts and flip flops and pajamas and lots of other clothing and accessories. My niece likes to wear them and my sister likes to buy them for her because they're colorful and happy, with cute images and sayings. … Read full post »

When I was growing up, we went to Chicago for a long weekend every summer and ate at a Chinese restaurant. It wasn't the only thing we did, but fortune cookies and the improbable video phones at the Museum of Science and Industry are what I remember. 

It was the early… Read full post »

My paternal grandfather fell down a flight of stairs when my dad was eight. He drank a lot and changed his surname when he left Norway. There are no pictures. That's all I know.

My maternal grandfather died from a heart attack before I was born. He was a farmer… Read full post »

I looked for a toothpick the other night to test a pan of brownies that were in the oven and was surprised to find that I didn't have any. There was no little cardboard box in any of the drawers, no plastic package with colored picks for canapes, and no single,… Read full post »

As far as I can remember I never even had to get in the back of the police car. They just let me follow them to the station. It wasn't protocol, but then they kind of knew me. I had gotten a ticket from the same officers, for rolling through the… Read full post »

I have regulars who come into the bookstore. Several are voracious readers, and come in nearly every week to buy multiple books. Others surprise me by showing up with notebooks and detailed lists of specific books, both read and unread that they're looking for, and leave only with books from the… Read full post »

For the first part of my life, I followed my older sister, doing what she had already done and doing things because she had done them. A combination of competitiveness, admiration, necessity, and resignation kept me in her footsteps and shadows. Like most of the clothes I wore growing up, my… Read full post »

They come into the  bookstore every several months. Never separately and always within a few minutes of opening, when no one else is there and a parking space is available right in front of the door.  He walks around and opens her car door and then guides her to the front… Read full post »

It's Friday morning, 1:45 a.m.,  five days before my writing class submission is due.  I should be asleep.  I shouldn't be obsessing about what I can write my submission about.  I did this last night too.  In bed at 11:00, awake until 4:00.  No ideas that I remembered… Read full post »

Sometimes I catch a glimpse of the plain brown paper wrapped package and, for a few seconds, get excited thinking I have a newly delivered present. The square shape holds the promise of a set of wine glasses or perhaps a hand made piece of pottery, carefully protected by pieces of… Read full post »

I spent a good part of my life thinking sloe gin was alcohol that took a long time to get drunk on.

My niece read the entire book of Gone With the Wind  thinking Melanie was pronounced as Meh-lawn'-ie.

And my dad spent his later years calling UPS  trucks "ups trucks,"… Read full post »

It seems so straight forward.  A perfect mixture of form and function. Except that this one apparently doesn't function all that well because they keep putting addenda at the bottom wit… Read full post »

When I walked through the door and sat beside them in a metal chair at the metal table in the room with bars, I became their hope.  I wasn't always what… Read full post »

I found asparagus in my hair last night. 

Ordinarily, I'd blame something like this on forgetfulness and chalk it up to the joys of aging.  But this didn't have anything to do with forgetting to take asparagus out of my hair, because I never put it there in the first place.… Read full post »

It's been a long time since I had babies, but I'm pretty sure I would have gotten my grandson's seat belt right on the grocery cart and not made it into a shoulder harness like my daughter… Read full post »

I grew up in a small central Illinois town "where the highways cross and the porch lights burn all night."  It was our claim to fame--the boast of a town of 3,000, set amid expanses… Read full post »

I tend to pick a lot of my books from from the blurbs on the back cover. The ones that herald a book as being "charming" or "inventive" or "insightful." It's not working out all that well.  

I just finished a book that promised to be"well written," and I… Read full post »