The goldfinches did their aerial mating dance this morning. Wow! The sun and breezes and twinkley water did their dance, too. Perfect. Lobster boats are tied up, waiting for prices to rise enough to make going out worth it, so the only early morning thrumming is, as Charlie awakened to find out, the massage option on my spa recliner.
A Roseledge Books newbie walked in and asked if I had any Jose Saramago and YES! Roseledge Books had one. This is very exciting and a definite Wow! Having an author someone wants is good; having a particular title is trickier, especially if it’s not current or on a school list. But RB had Jose Saramago’s Blindness which filled in for his The Cave, which I sold last year to one of RB’s exquisitely picky readers who is part of a book club that reads only Nobel Laureates, and which will now be filled in by his Baltasar and Blimunda. With these two spot-on’s, Saramago could be seeing the end of his run. Maybe RB needs to expand its Nobelist offerings. Equally exciting, the noteworthy RB newbie was an author and RB had his book (also Wow! and maybe Whew!) which was moderately prominently displayed. The too–many adverbs in the last sentence go to show you that I am not the killer in Harry Dolan’s latest, Very Bad Men, which I read and liked very much.
Classic, relevant rock walls and books define and enhance the within.
More Wow‘s: The world’s best nephew-in-law and a RB regular sent me a note to be sure I knew that in Douglas Preston’s and Lincoln Child’s Fever Dream, Pendergast’s wife was born in Rockland, Maine on Mechanic Street. LOCAL CONNECTION ALERT! I immediately ordered the book. New England note: The East Wind Inn is also on Mechanic Street, but this one is in Tenants Harbor and makes a T bar with Sea Street upon which RB is located. And friend Karen, also a RB regular, sent her book-a-day calendar’s suggestion of Mark Puls’ Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution which, after recently driving down 131 and seeing his replicated home, she now knew was pertinent. I ordered it right away. With David McCullough’s emphasis in 1776, and mentions in Ian Toll’s Six Frigates: Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy, Diana Gabaldon’s An Echo in the Bone, 7th in her time-travel Outlander series and William Martin’s thriller, City of Dreams, RB is practically saturated with Henry Knoxiana, a not-entirely-likable man of too many mashed potatoes who once was a bookseller.
Nothing beats high summer in the harbor except you with a good book.
Sometimes books mirror current events, but sometimes current events seem like the mirrors. Two such recent examples:
David Howard’s Lost Rights: The Misadventures of a Stolen American Relic follows the “covert travels” of North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights from 1789 until now, much as William Martin follows the travels of old documents in his series of mysteries, e.g. The Lost Constitution. RB has it and has ordered David Howard’s book.
Then there is the French forensic anthropologist/physician who, among many other things checks the validity of relics much as happens in John Case’s prescient thriller, The Genesis Code. It is one of my favorite snotty Vatican novels and RB has it just waiting for you.
The sailing school kids are flitting about the harbor in their daysailers and kayakers are more frequent. But too few sailboats are moored and almost no unknown walkers are here. I hope this is not the new normal.