Rabbit Holes

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Rabbit holes are my favorite part of the internet.  They can be used for heavy-duty research, but in my case they’re mostly just fun.  I’ve written about Dark Shadows many, many times on this blog.  Although I did watch many episodes of the original run with my brothers, my memories of the story line tend to come from the concurrent series of pulp fiction books by Marilyn Ross.  These books, which I have only ever seen used, were distinguished by their olive green covers and an oval cutout on the front where an image from the television series, sometimes apparently selected at random, was shown.  There were a total of 32 of them and, as an adult I collected them all.  Some months ago I wrote about my delight at finding several of them, in very good condition, at an antique and curio shop not far from us.  Recently in that shop again, I looked over the titles and discovered one that wasn’t in the series but was in the larger series, Paperback Library Gothic.

I’d never really given much thought to it, but the book was in great shape and was riffing off the Dark Shadows series.  It was reasonably priced, so how could I not?  Excited as a schoolboy coming home in time to catch the series on TV, I looked up the series online and fell down a rabbit hole.  There was an entire series in the mass market paperback format that I adore, from the sixties and seventies.  Shy of writing a bestseller myself, I’d never be able to afford them all.  The series included some classic titles out of copyright by such authors as Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austin, Bram Stoker, and Wilkie Collins (no relationship to Barnabas).  To these they added contemporary gothic titles including several by W. E. D. Ross, writing under the pseudonym Marilyn.  These were pre-Dark Shadows books.  There were well over a hundred of them.

Paperback Library was an independent New York City publisher founded either in 1960 or 1961, capitalizing on the pulp fiction and mass market paperback models.  They were bought out by Warner in 1970.  Warner eventually became Grand Central Publishing—still in New York.  In the large conglomerations that brought us down to only five major publishing houses in English, Grand Central was acquired by Hachette, one of said big five.  Recently the main distributor of mass market paperbacks decided it would no longer handle that format, essentially dooming it.  And with it a piece of my childhood.  Thankfully there are still some rabbit holes to fall down.

Hopeful Reading

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Although I prefer independent bookstores, I happened to find myself in a Barnes & Noble between other activities on a recent weekend.  This ended up being good for my spirits, although I didn’t buy anything.  The reason was, perhaps, ageist of me, that I was buoyed up by seeing so many young adults there buying books.  Granted, it was a cold, gray Sunday afternoon, but I read so much about the death of reading that this particular trip gave a bit of balance to all the doomsayers.  There is still a reading public.  And many of them are a good bit younger than yours truly.  I do wish more people my age would spend time in bookstores as well, but the future is with those who know to put down their devices and pick up actual books.

I’ve had more than one academic tell me that they do not assign e-reading for their classes.  One of them was a decade or two younger than me.  The reason?  Students don’t retain well what they read on a screen.  I tend to agree with this.  The context of setting aside time to open a book with no interruptions from texts, emails, or social media, is sacred.  You shut out the world and concentrate.  I try to do this for an hour each day (most days more than an hour) and it has to be done with print books.  I have no great love of electronic “books.”  The experience is sterile.  Devoid of true engagement.  And I’ve even been forced to read ebooks with other people’s highlights left behind.  When I buy a used book I try to make certain it’s an unmarked copy (although some sellers don’t look very carefully).  Why would I want an ebook with somebody else’s notes?

The visit to a bookstore is a restorative one.  In the rare instance where I know the proprietor, it becomes a social visit as well as a financial transaction.  Books are a kind of currency among some of us.  Although I know none of the names of the young people that I saw at Barnes & Noble, I do know something about them.  They enjoy books.  That is one of the most hopeful thoughts I can have.  As long as we manage to survive as a species, there is hope for the future if young people are interested in books.  Reading is a mind-expanding exercise.  Our life together is so much more enriching when we invite others in.  And some of them we meet between the covers of books.

Substitutes

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I discovered Mary Roach in a Borders store in Somerville, New Jersey.  Well, it might’ve been Raritan, technically, but it was right off the infamous Somerville Circle.  We were fairly new in town and I was looking for reading material.  I found Spook, her second book.  I enjoyed it so much I went back for her first book.  I introduced my wife to her third book and, starting with book number four, we’ve been reading them together.  (All of her books are at least mentioned on this blog; I rarely follow an author like that.) That brings us to Replaceable You, which published last year.  The subtitle, Adventures in Human Anatomy, gives you an idea of the content.  Roach is a charming science writer.  The two traits don’t often meet.  She peers at things that most of us shy away from, which, in a way, makes her a good potential horror writer.  Instead, she looks at her subjects with humor, often self-deprecating, and a sense of wonder.

Replaceable You isn’t my favorite of her books, but it’s not her fault.  Roach is about four years older than me and she too is facing aging.  This book is about parts of bodies that can be replaced, printed, or engineered.  Some of it is surprising and much of it almost incredible.  The reason that it isn’t my favorite is that it hits pretty close to home.  Two of my immediate family members have chronic health conditions.  (Life, of course, is a chronic health condition.)  I often think about the implications, but reading about them makes me uncomfortable.  As one reviewer once indicated, though, reading Mary Roach on any subject is enjoyable.

We are embodied creatures.  This is one reason that “artificial intelligence” will always retain the emphasis on the first word.  One of the surprising things I learned from this book was that organs/tissues are now starting to be 3-D printed.  Last time I looked, 3-D printing involved plastic, but in some places biological components are being used.  The tech isn’t far enough along to print actual organs yet, but there is incredible work being done.  It’s quite possible, and this is me, not Roach, that people born in a couple of decades (depending on whether we can get Republicans out of the White House, and science funding can be restored) may well be able to have biologically personalized health care that includes new organs made from their own cells.  That gets too close to eternity for my liking.  I enjoy living, but wouldn’t want to do it forever.  I’ll be okay along the way, however, as long as there are Mary Roach books to read.

Crafting Byron

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For a man who lived to be only thirty-six, Lord Byron tends to be featured in very long biographies.  I’ve been curious about him, but maybe not to the tune of 500-plus pages.  I’d seen references to Elbert Hubbard’s Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors: Lord Byron, and since it was only a handful of pages, and not very expensive, I got a copy.  As a biography it turned out to be exceedingly slim.  And written with a flowery prose.  In fact, you could read this easily in a day.  I did learn about about Lord Byron, but in this instance the author took precedence over the subject.  I knew nothing of Elbert Hubbard.  A free-thinker of the turn of the twentieth century, he was born in Illinois in 1856.  He was a successful traveling salesman but then started a commune called Roycroft outside Buffalo, New York.

The Roycrofters were crafters and artists living together and producing, in some cases influential, artworks.  The community operated from 1895 to 1938.  The buildings, which survive, are now National Historic Landmarks.  Elbert Hubbard was a philosopher and artist, as well as a socialist and anarchist.  It’s not surprising he took a liking to Lord Byron.  One of the crafting supplies at Roycroft was a printing press.  Hubbard published a series of Little Journeys, some sumptuously bound, others with paper covers, and, from experience, uncut pages.  Lord Byron was volume seven, published in 1900.  Roycroft continued for the remainder of Hubbard’s life, and a little beyond.  Hubbard and his second wife died in the sinking of the Lusitania during World War One.  His son kept the community going for another couple of decades.

American history is filled with colorful and creative individuals.  All I knew of Elbert Hubbard was that he wrote a reasonably short treatment of the life of Lord Byron.  Reading it I learned a bit about the other intensely curious and talented writer who’d died just over thirty years before before Hubbard was born.  Byron was then still alive in memory for many.  It turns out that both subject and author lived extraordinary lives.  And each, in their own way, influenced larger society.  And now, having read this small book, I’m inclined to plan a trip to East Aurora, outside Buffalo, to see the settlement of the Roycrofters.  That’s not a bad thing to come from a brief book, not expensive, to read about a poet.

Reclaiming the Past

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It started after Nashotah House.  That event shook me to my very core.  And I was approaching middle age.  I started taking an interest in my childhood.  I learned some uncomfortable truths that probably help explain the way that I am, but more tangibly, losing that job launched me back to both monster movies and the earnest need to collect books that I’d given up when I went to college to “grow up.”  Fortunately (perhaps) the internet had been invented and it was possible to locate used copies from the seventies.  I’ve written many times about the Dark Shadows books that I began collecting shortly after the incident in Delafield.  But there were others.  Many others.  Often it became a matter of identifying and finding the same edition that I’d had as a child.  (Modern reprints complicate this, but with enough patience the exact book editions can be found, and usually no more expensive than  contemporary bookstore prices.

The goal has never been to replace all of my childhood books, but those that evoked a palpable sense of wonder in my young psyche.  This was strange because I was very religious and these books sometimes challenged what my fundamentalist upbringing taught.  Some years back I had to find the exact edition of Erich van Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? that I had.  The curiosity did not extend to several of his other books from the seventies.  I got rid of these because they caused me to question my faith.  Teenagers.  In any case, I also had a compulsion to replace a book of Twilight Zone adaptations.  The cover of that book still sends me back to Rouseville.  Then I had a hankering to reread Logan’s Run.  It’d been reprinted many times, and the one I had as a kid was itself a reprint.  I needed that exact one.

My wife has been very patient with me.  I’m seeking something here.  I’ve always been haunted by the truth and there is a nagging feeling that I had grasped, only by the very tips of my fingers, a little bit of it before college.  Facing higher education (the first in my family to do so), I felt I needed to “put away childish things.”  The library that sustained me through those difficult Rouseville years was scuttled.  There’s a saying about babies and bathwater.  I’m beginning to think there may be something to it.  There were some very dark incidents in my early childhood, before I learned to read.  I think of them often.  And yet, a sense of wonder remains.  Mostly in the escapism of  old, mass market paperbacks from the seventies.

Uncut

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I remember well the first time I encountered a book with uncut pages.  It was in Edinburgh and the book was mine on inter-library loan.  This presented a dilemma: should I, a mere post-graduate student, cut the pages of a book older than me?  The librarian told me it was fine to do so.  I wasn’t sure how to go about it.  I’ve never trusted myself with scissors and this seemed like such a permanent act I was about to commit.  I settled on a butter knife, figuring a sharp knife might cut into the meat of the page.  It worked fairly well.  I later bought a book with uncut pages.  I didn’t do so well on it, but I need to read what was inside (and it wasn’t a cheap book).  

This is more common in Europe than it is in the United States.  I recently bought an out of print book for my research.  The pages were uncut.  Now we have the internet which can be useful from time to time.  The proper technique, it turns out, is to use an index card with a saw-like motion.  It works extremely well.  Fighting paper with paper.  And I love these old books.  The heavy paper.  The actual, clear imprint of where the type hit the page.  This was an object being crafted, not electrons cycling around a screen.  When it was done you were left with something that felt permanent.  Something that wouldn’t disappear when an online vendor went out of business.  These old books also give you an idea of how they were made.  Offset books (those made on a traditional printing press) are printed on paper that is then folded and bound together.  Most modern presses also trim the edges, but you can, on rare occasions, still see where metal met paper.

Substantial.  These books feel substantial.  Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy the trim, clean look of the modern book, but part of me misses the solidity of old fashioned books.  As much as I enjoy visiting new bookstores, I also like used bookstores.  There used to be several around here, but I think the pandemic killed them off.  You can browse their inventory online, but it’s not the same experience as that dusty, musty smell of books aging well.  Now that mass-market paperbacks are being discontinued, they have their own place of pride as being the books that brought reading to the masses.  Now people stare at screens and call it reading.  I, for one, will be keeping my index cards handy for the next book with uncut pages that comes my way.

Leaving Soon

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I’d been hoping to read the novel before seeing the movie, but there’s nothing like the words “leaving soon” on your streaming service to spur you into action.  So I watched Misery before I was ready to.  I remember the newspaper reviews from 1987, when the novel came out.  I didn’t read any Stephen King novels until those I’ve posted about on this blog.  There’s a full record here!  I do remember the reviews saying it was self-referential.  The protagonist, as in The Shining (is Jack Torrence a protagonist?), is a writer.  And the book is a writer’s nightmare.  When the movie came out in 1990, I had no interest in seeing it.  A couple of things changed my mind, however.  First of all, it is referenced all the time.  I didn’t even know how it ended.  Another factor was that it was a Rob Reiner horror movie.  And Reiner himself had been murdered a few weeks before I sat down to watch it.

I really wanted to read the novel first.  My reading pile is pretty high.  And currently the next Stephen King novel on it is The Dead Zone.  And yes, I have already seen the movie.  Unlike some critics, I think King is a substantial writer.  He has profound things to say, especially about religion.  And, of course, the movie Misery has plenty of that.  Annie Wilkes is a religious fanatic.  She’s also a fan of Paul Sheldon (the writer).  God tells her things.  She wears a cross.  She can’t stand swearing.  But even so, I wonder if King clearly had her religion in mind.  I would’ve guessed that, given her cinematic profile, she would’ve not been a wine drinker.  And I would’ve guessed that the Bible would appear in the movie.  She drinks and she doesn’t even quote the Good Book—at least not that I caught.

Some day, if I keep doing this long enough, I might make the connection between religion and horror plain.  I know scholars, not shackled by a 9-2-5 are working on that.  And like the books I have to read, there’s a waiting list for those I want to write.  One has my particular attention at this point, and I’ll be trying to put that to bed before starting on a new one.  Before working on such a book I’ll have to read Misery, the novel.  I do plan to do so.  I’m not a fast reader and I have quite a big stack.  In fact, I wouldn’t even be thinking about reading it now.  But my streaming service came up with those fatal words, “leaving soon.”

Little Gems

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On a recent diversion to a curio shop we like, I found that one of the “Dark Shadows” paperbacks they had was one I hadn’t read.  Dark Shadows had, of course, spurred a pretty amazing franchise for its day.  It’d sunk its fangs into many young people who would not have otherwise been inclined towards soap operas.  I’ve written several times about the spin-off books by Marilyn Ross.  That series encompasses much of my childhood.  This particular book was a knock-off with the same branding titled The Dark Shadows Book of Vampires and Werewolves.  Now, to be fair, the asking price was about the same as a trade paperback price today—a little less, even—and the collection included, I saw at a glance, Polidori’s “The Vampyre.”  So now it sits on my shelf next to the other Dark Shadows books.  Apart from the gimmick of listing the book as edited by Barnabas and Quentin Collins, it is actually a nice period piece.

In addition to Polidori, eight stories I’d never read.  Two of them make the claim of being non-fiction, and a third maybe.  The tales, which favor vampires over werewolves, also include what are some little gems.  One is a story by M. R. James (“Count Magnus”).  Other noteworthy members are “Wolves Don’t Cry” by Bruce Elliott and “The Vampire Nemesis” by “Dolly.”  “For the Blood is the Life,” by F. Marion Crawford, is also good.  In other words, the collection was better than I suspected it would be.  I’d not read any of these before, so they were all new to me.  I was particularly intrigued by “Dolly.”  Apparently the author of The Vampire Nemesis and Other Weird Tales of the China Coast has remained anonymous since its 1905 publication.  The book has been rediscovered in modern times, and I’m now curious about it.

Although I like to think myself immune, I am sometimes susceptible to branding.  For whatever reason, that olive-green oval-cutout cover design, when spotted in the wild, makes me ecstatic.  My childhood wasn’t ideal, and I remember when I started to find these books used.  It was a very challenging phase in my younger years.  I knew even then that these cheap paperbacks would take me away from my troubles for a while.  And they would transport me back to an even more troubling period of my childhood when I would watch the show after school with my brothers.  A visit to the curio shop from time to time may be just what the doctor prescribes.

Cool Book Festival

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So yesterday I was at the Lehigh Valley Book Festival.  (It occurs to me know that I should perhaps post such notices in advance, but I know few people in the area where I live.)  I was there displaying my books.  I have participated in the Easton Book Festival for at least four years now, but I had only recently learned about this event held in Bethlehem.  The weather was clear, but cold for an outdoor event that involves a lot of sitting—it put me in mind of having to put on gym shorts and tee-shirts to go outside one November in college to have the coach lecture us about football, with no moving or actual playing involved.  It turned out to be an endurance test.  Not quite of the Shackleton magnitude, but I am sensitive to cold and it was struggling to reach 40, and this on the 28th of March.  At least there was a cool breeze.

Several lovely people stopped to talk and showed some interest in my work.  I’m grateful to all of them.  As an author you often wonder if you really are alone in your interests.  Since my table was next to a run of three tables of children’s books—when those authors decided on an unauthorized move of their tables into the sun (we were on the shaded side of the building), they did not invite me to join them—I was a bit self-conscious.  Parents hurried their kids past my modest display.  I took a quick swing through the other stands and I think mine was the only one for adults.  Many people glanced and frowned as they walked by, but several people got it.  I know there are local horror fans out there, but I have trouble finding them.

The Lehigh Valley Book Festival isn’t huge and several people just happened upon it, asking why we were there.  It was held at the main branch of the library and it is fairly centrally located in town.  Also, there was a cherry blossom festival taking place on the other side of the library.  I couldn’t be certain but it seemed that many more people were headed for that.  And honestly, I’ve lived in this area for going on eight years and I just learned about the festival last fall.  And I’m a book guy.  Not too connected locally, I’ll admit.  There was enough interest that I might consider it again next year (if selected again).  Especially if the temperatures are back towards the seasonal norm.

Shopping News

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It’s one of the perils of the online age.  You order something online and the company (which has more money than a mere individual) asks you to pay for their mistake when the send the wrong thing.  This has happened to me a few times.  Once I ordered a used book.  The vendor got the author right but sent the wrong title.  When I explained this they still wanted me to pay to ship their mistake back to them.  I explained the illogic of the situation to them: You said you would send me a certain book and you did not.  In order to refund me I have to pay for the shipping, which sets me back a few bucks without having the right book at all, which I will have to reorder.  They were not happy, claiming it was my responsibility to get the book back to them.  I asked them to pay for the shipping.  They refused.  Eventually they said “Just keep it.  But this time only!”  I do not order from them now.

More recently Amazon, which, for all its issues, is pretty good about getting the right item to you, sent me a defective book.  I noticed as soon as I unpacked it that the cover wasn’t printed correctly.  Words were cut off on the right-hand side, and the spine was printed on the front.  I would’ve accepted it as a fluke, but opening it up I saw that the interior was for a completely different book.  Likely the printer hadn’t properly cleared out the covers from the last printing job before starting the new project.  Amazon didn’t fuss about replacing it.  They did, however, require me to return the defective one.  They’ll pay for the shipping, but I have to pay for the gas and time to drive to one of their preferred vendors.  It’s the same problem on a smaller scale.  Amazon made the mistake (actually the printer did but nobody checked) and I had to pay something to make it right.  This seems off to me.

I worked in retail for a few years and one of the messages management always emphasized is “the customer is always right.”  Sometimes they weren’t, but most of the time we had to resolve any disagreements as if they were.  Online ordering takes the face-to-face out of it.  The person who receives something other than what they ordered, for which they’ve paid the agreed price, has been wronged.  It’s a mistake unlikely to happen in an actual bookstore.  There’s a price to be paid for the convenience of ordering online.  And that price is paid by the customer.

Entitlement

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I’ve been guilty of this myself, so the first stone is being cast straight up into the air over my own head.  Academic authors misunderstand how to title a book.  The fact is, these days, that libraries often make their choice whether or not to buy based on the main title—no time for subtitles!  Trade books tend to sell with flashy, if somewhat ambiguous titles.  A well-selected title is truly a thing of beauty.  This tends not to work for academic books.  The librarian wants to know, at a glance, what the book is about.  After being in the editing biz for about seventeen years now, I can honestly say that the vast majority of authors just don’t get this.  They propose catchy, even clever titles that say nothing concerning what the book is about.  Many of them are titles of several other published books.  What’s called for is a descriptive moniker.

Again, I’ve made this mistake myself, but many of the guild have a difficult time distinguishing between the books they write and those that you find in bookstores (trade books).  This is understandable enough when you’ve put years of your life into writing the tome and you want to get some notice for having done so.  Getting notice is a trick all its own these days, but if you’re willing to settle for even average sales, attend to the title.  The book business itself has changed.  For example, back when I was writing my first book (which did have a descriptive title), academic books sales with established publishers sold at least around 300 copies, pretty much guaranteed.  So much so that some presses would print 300 copies and when they sold out the book was put “out of stock indefinitely.”  (You don’t put books “out of print” since authors often have legal recourse to request the rights back.)

That “at least 300” level has now shrunk to under 100.  One reason is there is far too much being published these days.  Publish or perish has come home to roost.  Libraries, which tend to struggle, have to be selective.  And picking a book with a chipper but non-descriptive title is not likely to happen.  So you cleverly title a book, say, Nightmares with the Bible, and it sells fewer than 100 copies.  (In my defense, I understood that it was likely to be made paperback, given the target readership for the series.)  Lesson learned.  Trade titles need to be left to trade books.  And let’s be honest; if your book is a research book written for other researchers, library sales are generally your only hope.

The Power of Yes

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In going back over my fiction writing, I had a realization.  Both the first novel I tried seriously to get published (still not) and the first short story I submitted to a journal were accepted the first place I submitted.  That perhaps seemingly insignificant fact is quite important.  Like most, or at least many, writers, I’m a great self-doubter.  This probably comes from not knowing many other people personally and having a Calvinistic-level assessment of my own work.  Affirmation is rare in my experience.  Having a publisher say, “Yes, we like this” early on in my attempts to publish fiction was a tremendous boost and gave me the courage to try again.  It didn’t take long for the rejections to start rolling in, but I knew that someone believed in me.  Belief is far more important than most people think.  Worlds can be built on it.

The publisher of my debut novel decided to back out of the contract when the acquiring editor left.  I know, different editor, different game.  But this was under contract.  Thirteen years later it remains unpublished, not for lack of trying.  I began re-revising it in recent times since I’ve found a potential publisher and reading it I could see what might’ve frightened off others.  Still, I stand by it.  The book was written in a style very different from most of my subsequent fiction.  Characters speak their minds instead of being beat down by the system.  Readers of my academic work would be shocked.  That’s one reason that I use a pseudonym.  I sometimes wonder what I’ll do if the novel ever does get published.  It’s difficult to promote and keep your identity secret.

The point is that we never know what good we might do when we encourage someone who underestimates themself.  This may seem an odd thing to say when so many arrogant individuals command the world stage these days.  There are many people, however, who might accomplish great things if someone only gives them a little encouragement.  I think of this constantly in my work as well as my private life.  Is all this person needs simply some uplift?  Publishing can be a harsh world.  You put yourself out there and people like to start taking pot shots at you.  I’ve received much criticism over the years, and this has been primarily for nonfiction publishing.  The reviews some fiction writers receive, whether on Amazon, Goodreads, or even in print, can be unkind.  Some of the critique may be deserved, but why not offer it up with a word of motivation rather than Schadenfreude?  It can make a huge difference.

Virtues of Fiction

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So, my first royalty statement for Sleepy Hollow as American Myth arrived.  It is my poorest selling book ever, not even notching up to Nightmares with the Bible, and that one was twice as expensive.  A couple things: I know that nonfiction books had a hard year last year.  Also, “academic” books tend to do better in the subsequent years after their initial release, for those of us with no name recognition.  In any case I’ve decided to try focusing on fiction.  The compulsion to write is deep-seated in me.  My nonfiction books are creative explorations of ideas neglected or never before brought together.  They’re also priced too high for the trade market.  I was pleased to see, recently, that The Wicker Man is now in over 400 libraries, according to WorldCat.  That makes it my second best-selling book, after Weathering the Psalms.  A Reassessment of Asherah has been viewed over 9000 times on Academia.edu.

So, fiction.  I write my fiction under a pseudonym.  I currently have one novel out for consideration and another very close to being ready.  I have several in the wings.  What strikes me as crazy about all of this is that I’m told (as I have been since high school) that my writing is quite good.  I’m not the one to assess this claim, since I’m far too close to it.  It does make me wonder, however, what it takes to earn a little cash at it.  My last royalty check for a new book was half of what they usually are.  Good thing inflation is under control and the economy booming.  So I hear.  I do believe that the most impactful books tend to be fiction.  People like a good story.  And they can last for many decades.  The nonfiction that stands the test of time is a very narrow shelf indeed.  At least compared to our fictional siblings.

For fiction you need to keep at it to improve.  I think of all the years I’ve poured into my last four nonfiction books.  The only real critique I’ve seen of Holy Horror was that it was “too well written.”  When’s the last time someone said such things about fiction?  Oh, I’ve got three nonfiction books underway as well.  One of them I’m quite excited about.  But then I take a look at this royalty slip sitting in front of me and wonder if I’ll ever learn.  I have to write.  I’ve done that since fifth grade as a means of coping.  Here I am at over half a century at it.  There’s no danger of giving it up now. But the form it may take, well, that’s up for grabs.

Can’t Read?

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Andrew Laties has lived a remarkable life.  He runs Book & Puppet, a local bookstore in Easton, Pennsylvania.  He’s run other bookstores before this one, but now that he’s in the Lehigh Valley he started the Easton Book Festival.  I’ve blogged about his previous books here and here.  In addition to running a bookstore and book festival, he’s also a musician and puppeteer.  In the current climate of book banning, things aren’t exactly easy for those who live literature.  My wife and I just finished reading his latest book You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read this Book?  These are the thoughts of a book seller about book banning.  Beyond the many other hats he wears, Andrew is also an activist.  It makes me tired just thinking about all of this.

I remember when the US government promoted reading.  I grew up when we were concerned about Russia and the arms race.  I was alive for (but don’t remember) the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The response, from both parties, was that Americans needed to be educated.  And that meant reading.  Reading is fundamental, so the saying went.  Since 2016, and especially 2024, we’ve taken a 180.  Book banning is in vogue although anyone who reads knows it doesn’t work.  Still, those who sell books can either sit back and worry or choose to do something about it.  Andrew is one of those who is doing something.  Reading is the way we improve human lives.  Daily I read about how some people are preferring books “written” by AI—which has never been and never can be human.  And right-wingers around the country are carrying out their war on books.

Andrew and I talk about publishing whenever I visit Book & Puppet.  His first book got picked up by Seven Stories Press, but he, like the rest of us who have jobs for a living, hasn’t found sympathetic agents or publishers, as he describes in this book.  That hasn’t stopped him from writing or from achieving remarkable things.  I was fortunate enough to be involved in the first Easton Book Festival, and a few after that.  It is wonderful to walk around a town where book events are going on all over the place.  Like much that is good, the event took a hit during Covid, but it still goes on.  And it does so because of something that reader and writers have: vision.  Part memoir and part a call to action, You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read this Book? deserves to be widely read.

Welcome 2026

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I put great stock in holidays, but I’ve never felt a deep connection to New Year’s Day.  I’m more of a morning person than the stay up late sort, and the New Year also seems cold after the coziness of Christmas.  But here we are in 2026 nevertheless.  We’re encouraged to look ahead.  I’m not much of a corporate person and I don’t see much wisdom in devising five year plans in an unpredictable world or any such nonsense.  The way things have been going in the news, it’s hard to have a five-day plan that bears any resemblance to reality.  But New Year’s Day does seem an appropriate season for optimism.  Hope stands here, anticipating better days ahead.  I am, despite appearances, an optimist.  I do believe in progress and the calendar keeps on ticking over regardless.  What will 2026 hold?  Who knows.  Best to take it one day at a time.

For me personally, I’ve got a couple books nearly complete and I do hope to find publishers this year.  And I’ve got many others started as well.  Writing is an act of optimism.  I’m always touched when someone lets me know they’ve found my work interesting, or even helpful.  Someone once contacted me to let me know Holy Horror had helped them through a difficult time.  This made me happy; writing books is a form of connection.  When I read books—a major planned activity for 2026—I’m connecting with people I don’t know (usually).  Writing to me feels like giving back.  The funny thing about it is the tension of having little time to do it seems to make it better.  I always look forward to the break at the end of the year but I find myself using the time to recover rather than for the intensive writing I always plan to do.

I have spent the last several days doing a lot of reading.  That too is a coping technique.  I’ve got some good books that I’m looking forward to finishing in 2026.  And the blog bibliography continues to grow.  Looking ahead I see reading and writing.  That to me is a vision of hope.  I didn’t stay up to midnight last night—that only makes me start out the new year grumpy.  No, instead I woke up early to start the year by writing.  And reading.  What does 2026 hold?  I have no idea.  I’d rather not speculate.  I do believe that as time stretches on some improvements will begin to take place.  I do believe holidays are important, both looking back and looking ahead.