Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

What sustains us

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:01:00 +0000

The snow is coming down this morning, in Maine. And in the garden I left the carrots in the ground a day too long, because instead of working yesterday when it was sunny and beautiful outside, I headed down the coast to paint and didn't get home until just after dark. Which is mighty early right now. (I found out I can paint outside when it's only 40 degrees. Good to know.) So today after breakfast I bit the bullet and hurried outside in my pyjamas and gardening boots and coat, hat, and gloves, and dug up the rest of the carrots. It (I, that is) wasn't pretty, but such is life when one works at home. As with potatoes, digging carrots is a satisfying job. They have a great scent and the fresh green tops were good to see as the snow flew around my trowel.

It amazes me to consider a handful of seeds in my palm, and what eventually becomes of them:

Shown here during their bath. I snipped the tops off and put them on the compost pile, gave the carrots a quick rinse and pat dry, and loaded up the crisper drawers in the fridge. I've started making a stew every week, my usual pattern as colder weather approaches. This week's version has chicken, barley, potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, stock. Delicious. Even better knowing I grew some of it myself.

One of the books we found at last weekend's library sale is a lovely little reprint of John Evelyn's discourse about gardening and garden vegetables and plants, his Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets, originally published in London in 1699, here reprinted by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 1937. (Sallets = salads.) It is, according to its introduction, "... a book of directions for gardening and cooking... written in a discoursive style and with a leisureliness and in a rhythm suited to the slow pace of a horse trotting through the winding lanes of the English countryside." I've never read Evelyn's famous diary, so this will serve as a good introduction to the workings of his mind. Before I attempt the entire diary. Since I don't yet have a copy, I'm not putting any pressure on myself to do so - as with many great books, it is enough to know it waits for me, someday.

Until then, I putter. And take to heart Evelyn's words from his dedication to this book: "...how much might I say of Gardens and Rural Employments, preferrable to the Pomp and Grandeur of other Secular Business..." He describes an interesting recipe for Pudding of Carrot (p.141) which calls for grated carrots, bread crumbs, cream, butter, eggs, sugar, salt, and nutmeg, beaten together and then baked in a quick oven. Hmm. Here I am with many carrots on my hands and cooking on the brain, after seeing the film Julie & Julia, and reading the book afterwards. But I can't see myself cooking my way through Evelyn's Acetaria. Gardening through it, perhaps...?

As my Whimsy takes me

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:52:00 +0000

I went to a small library book sale yesterday and came away with three cartons of books ($82), and now have minor mountain of new reading, and even some books to sell, including a signed John Updike first edition - the best of the lot, moneywise (paid $1). But, these concerns are overridden, and all books superceded, since I stopped in at a favorite secondhand book shop this morning in pursuit of more Dorothy L. Sayers, and emerged with a softcover reprint of all the Lord Peter short stories and a tatty copy of Busman's Honeymoon. My dilemma: until Busman's Honeymoon is finished, I will get precisely nothing else accomplished. And it's already late in the day, today, if I want to sleep well tonight. So I feel I must put off starting it until tomorrow, when I can devote the majority of the day to its reading. Such sloth! Perhaps I should plan particularly unpleasant jobs on either side of all that pleasure. Turning over the compost pile, or doing the final weeding in the garden, say, or handwashing heavy sweaters. This Yankee work ethic is a rather dubious inheritance, when all is said and done. When I long for insouciance. Maybe I should read back-issues of The Idler, next? Or more Sayers - at one point in Strong Poison, Peter looks around his library of fine first editions (he is a book-collector, you see, another reason to love him) and wonders what good they are, in real life. And then quickly comes to his senses. Let us follow suit.

Other worlds than this

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Apologies for a prolonged silence. Life has been insistently literal this fall. And my reading of late has been scattered and haphazard, mostly consisting of brief sojourns in fat anthologies. Two exceptions - I've been spending time with Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, via their published diaries and letters, and travel memoirs. I rediscovered an anthology they assembled in the early 1940s - I'd forgotten I'd owned a copy and found it again while moving books hither and yon recently - entitled Another World Than This... (Michael Joseph 1945). It combines two of my favorite literary formats, the anthology of quotations and the almanac. The jacket copy states that the compilers "...have been guided by no principle other than a desire to provide for every month of the year a small selection of passages which may interest or please the ordinary reader." The ordinary reader of the British 1940s, alas, is very different from the ordinary reader of today, but I find we can still meet on some common ground - that of recognition of beauty. I love the way a good anthology can weave a common cloth from disparate sources across time and space, and theirs is like a fine antique carpet. The quotations are short and long, from all eras except the current one (with a very few exceptions), and must have been a joy to find and mark in the first place, particularly as an antidote to the very visible destruction of the war (the antithesis of beauty and intellectual or soul-ful pursuits).

A quote (p.180), from poet Coventry Patmore (1823-1896, Magna est Veritas) which suits my way of thinking quite well at the moment, and a recent painting to match:

"Here, in this little Bay,
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world's course will not fail:
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not."

The other anthology I've been reading (I said two exceptions) is The Sayers Holiday Book, a thick Dorothy L. Sayers omnibus of mystery novels and stories (Victor Gollancz 1963). Not my usual fare at all, but I must say her Gaudy Night is a deeply sublime and satisfying story, and I wish in my heart of hearts that Peter O'Toole had been able to play Lord Peter in a film of this tale, when he was a young man. Gaudy Night is the kind of story you need a stack of reference books beside you while you read, if you want to be able to understand all the literary asides and quotations within, except the story itself won't allow you to break from its spell in order to do a little bit of dry research. Keep reading! Keep reading! it says.

And I read half the novel in one sitting, finally had to go to sleep it was so late, dreamed about who the culprit might be and whether or not Harriet Vane would allow herself to be loved, and woke up starving to read the rest of it over breakfast. Now that's a good book. I can say it took me away, and I couldn't ask for more than that.

More island time

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:59:00 +0000

This weekend I'm heading to Islesboro to paint for a week, so I'm packing and figuring out what to bring, and wondering how much like fall it will really be (Pants? Sweaters?? Long johns???). Packing the art supplies is always great - seeing blank canvases and panels and wondering what I'm going to fill them with over the course of the week. I've been painting on wooden panels lately and really loving it - here is one from my island trip last week (this is the finished painting that I was just starting in the photos from the post-before-last):

I've added a lot of new work from 2009 to my painting website, both in the oils folder and the available work folder. Many thanks to those who purchased paintings recently - I've been tallying up and realized I've sold 18 so far this year. A successful season, all in all. Now I'm looking forward to a long quiet winter of working at home, reading, painting larger canvases again indoors (most of my summer work is outside, and smallish, meaning under 18" x 24"), half-heartedly selling books online, and continuing to renovate the attic for my painting studio. After one more island week, painting with friends. One of the highlights of my year, and a wonderful way to bookend the summer.

Culling books and potatoes

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:00:00 +0000

This morning I finished reading Ronald Blythe's new collection of essays, The Bookman's Tale (Canterbury Press 2009). The quote on the cover from a TLS review of his work reads: "...wonderfully crafted rural writing in which a true spirituality and keen observation holds hands with a sharp and kindly wit." Something to aspire to, in life and art. One of my favorite pieces in the book is entitled "The Bookshelf Cull" and I wish I could quote the entire thing. Bits must suffice. Many bits.

On the dangers of attempting to thin out: "Should you carry a dozen volumes from one shelf to another, you will most likely be carrying hundreds before you finish. Sequences will be thrown out; titles will have to be regrouped; subjects will demand respect." (p.42)

On deciding what to keep and what to pass along: "First, a large box for the chuck-outs, the space-makers. Then the mighty pause. What Christian hand could dispense with a 1901 history of the Quakers, spider and all? And might I not need four different editions of Emma?" (ibid)

On the embarrassment of lent books: "Long-borrowed volumes cry 'Thief!' They form a penitential pile, and will be returned to their own country." (ibid)

On the inherent difficulty of rearranging: "On and on I go, staggering up and down stairs, cuddling to me the treasures and the once-read and the ten-times-read, the gifts, the nice pick-ups, the inheritances..., the ceaselessly bought, the rarely abandoned - which is why the cardboard box is only a quarter full." (p.43)

Lovely bookishness aside, some real joys in this book are found in his use of language. His metaphors and turns of phrase shine on the pages, throughout:

"...the south wind in the poplars.... often rises to a roar and is sumptuous. It is as if the village is in full sail." (p.81)

"At five to eight exactly, the sun jumps into view like a smartly flicked coin." (p.92) (Wow!!! I wish I had written that! Instead, I come up with something such as, "The sun rose.")

"Outside, the rain-clouds race; inside, the papers strew the room. Half a shelf of books has given up all propriety and lies like abandoned ethics all over the study floor." (p.94).

I could go on and on. In fact I find I have. And I will continue to do so. Another set of joys within these essays is based on the inevitable cycles of rural life and season. And thus I happily read about Blythe blackberrying, and picking apples, and digging potatoes, as I do the very same things myself, this time of year. We picked six more quarts of blackberries yesterday, out of the mammoth patch in the woods nearby. And the last of the potatoes, Red Norland and Kennebec, came out of the garden over the weekend:

Digging potatoes reminds me of hunting for Easter eggs. We brought in the red and yellow onions as well, although I left in the ground the ones whose tops were still green enough to lead me to believe they will continue to plump up. The harvest is a satisfying sight, and I am thinking fondly of the winter soups and stews that these will become part of:

I also think longingly of clean dry root cellars of the past. While Ronald Blythe thinks of attics:

"My head is like an attic, full of things that might come in handy. You never know. People tell me how astonished they are at what it holds. They don't know that there is a cupboard full of questions." (p.111)

One more week of summer

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:47:00 +0000

One of the finest weeks of the entire summer here in Maine happened to be this first week of September. Sunny and dry, near 80 degrees every day. I spent three days painting with a dear friend out on an island in Penobscot Bay, and to say it was heavenly would be an understatement. Wednesday was perhaps the best day - we packed a picnic and our painting supplies into a dinghy and rowed to a nearby island. We painted together, swam, ate lunch, beachcombed around the island, and rowed home when the afternoon came to a close.

We arrived when the high tide had just turned, so we were able to put the boat far up on the beach. After the first painting session and lunch, my friend got some sun while I circumnavigated the island, taking pictures and taking in the feeling of Maine at its best. I love painting the intertidal zones, they change the landscape so much with the high and low tides we have here:

My friend took a few pictures of me just starting a painting of the next island in the small chain we were on, as the tide continued to fall and the currents swirled around the rocks:

I had my guerrilla painting kit with me again - I like to travel light on trips, so I left my easel behind and just brought my palette loaded with paint, medium, brushes, a few canvases and panels, paint rags, trash bag, and dropcloth, all loaded into a basket. The basket then serves as something to prop my canvas against while I sit and paint:

The painting came out well, it retained some of the freshness of the day, which is usually all I can hope for. We rowed home, wind and tide thankfully with us all the way. A day of perfection and an appropriate send-off for summer. We store up days like this, like squirrels with acorns, because we know winter is on its way, you see. We need to remember that Maine is this, too. Not just the other. (The old joke around here goes: Maine has two seasons. Winter, and Construction.)

Oh, although I brought no books with me, my friend did have books at her house, but after painting all day I was too tired to do much of anything except jot down the day's events in my journal as my eyes threatened to close. Although during my visit I did read an essay about an artist I admire inordinately. And played many games of Bananagrams... What a week. How did I get so lucky.

A little light reading - is there such a thing?

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:05:00 +0000

The pleasures of belles lettres should never be underestimated. I took a chance on a little book of essays over the weekend, after a browse at a local book barn. Read the first half of it last night and the second half over lunch today, in spite of never having heard of either the book or the authors. Now I find myself charmed and delighted to find like minds, two sisters, Frances and Gertrude Warner, and their book of light essays Pleasures and Palaces (Houghton Mifflin 1933). Many of the essays appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and House Beautiful, and at their best they have a tone similar to Louise Andrews Kent's fine Mrs. Appleyard books, which I have read and re-read and re-read again with so much pleasure. The Warners write essays entitled "Household Scenes and How To Make Them," "The Good Use of Worry," "Dabbling" ("...there are many things that are worth doing rather badly." p.18), "Delving" ("...a dabbler who suddenly goes on a delving rampage is attractive. He sets about it with the zeal of a professional and the zest of an amateur, and he sometimes accomplishes a surprising amount of work." p.25), and the like. In the essay on picnics, the authors endear me to them even more by mentioning Christopher Morley. He packed three donuts per adult, apparently, on his picnics.

The book ends with an essay about palaces - those of our own building, both in physical reality and in one's internal architecture. A perfect description of a fine library in a beautiful house by the sea is followed by a description of persons of like mind, who find their finery outside, in nature (p.167):

"...no matter how besieged they may be, they are always able, with half a day of sunshine and high wind, to air out and renovate their whole soul's edifice, filling it with freshness and the clear beauty of a new season - ..."

Lovely. A book of quiet pleasures. In my reading life it came hard on the heels of Nicholson Baker's new novel, The Anthologist (Simon & Schuster 2009) - barely a novel, barely a plot, nonetheless a beautiful paean to poetry and poets. I read it in one sitting. He mentions Christopher Morley, too, oddly enough (pp.14-15). And his poet-narrator reveres Mary Oliver, as I do. He even mentions a folk singer I love, Slaid Cleaves. So all in all, Baker had me in the palm of his hand from the get-go. I finished reading it, and thought, Okay, someone else I know must read this book immediately so we can talk about it. I really loved it. Baker captures how us literary obsessives think. Books, books, books. Authors, authors, authors. Our own internal digressions. And occasionally real life, a major event in real life, gets a plain unadorned sentence wedged into our cluttered and busy minds.

But, for the next few days I am taking a page from the sisters Warner, and getting outside into the sunshine. To renovate my edifice. I'm off to an island for a short painting trip, and *gasp* I'm not taking any books...

Harvest days

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:41:00 +0000

Late summer in Maine is so often about fruition. We're in the middle of a hot stretch of weather and the landscape is responding with abundance and literally, fruit, everywhere we look. Ryan and I have been foraging and canning off and on over the past weeks. He's turned into a master jam-maker, a development I somehow never envisioned in our evolving relationship. Must be all this country living. Our garden is growing in fits and starts - the dill is taller than the corn, for example. The pumpkins are finally flowering like crazy but it might be too late for them to develop actual pumpkins before frost comes, I just don't know. The tomatoes are leggy and green, also. I'm lucky to get enough for two servings every two or three days. Last year at this time we were giving away extra quarts, after eating all we could. The flowers are very happy, though. Witness the response of the sweet peas to all the rain in June and July, and now finally, some truly hot sun:

They're taller than I am. Soon I'll have to interleave some dead branches in the top of the snow fence, so they can keep on climbing. One of my favorite flowers, for their silkiness, color, hardy delicacy, and heady scent.

Back to the fruit, though - this year we've raked blueberries, foraged for raspberries and the very first of the blackberries, and just lately, for cranberries - something I've never seen out there for the picking, until we found a little spot way downeast. Here's Ryan out filling his canning jar, in the wild:

Yesterday we were in this very spot for a second visit, and handpicked three quarts in about two hours, between hiking to and fro, and taking a break to jump in the ocean as the tide was rising and filling the cove we were next to with that delicious bone-chilling open-ocean coldness. Lovely on a ninety-degree day. I was still cold even after a long hike back to the car.

Earlier in the day we both worked at the Machias Blueberry Festival - Ryan timing the early-morning road race, and me picking books at the library book sale, conveniently located right next to the road race course. I gleaned three boxes of books for twenty-five dollars, including a lovely little book from the 1850s on the cultivation of cranberries. (Is there such a thing as coincidence? Me, I think not.) I also found an early Mark Twain item, a Willy Pogany first edition, a huge self-published book on collecting railroad uniform buttons (so obsessive, so great...), and a stack of other interesting things. August, a good harvest month indeed.

Clearly, I am full of it

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:20:00 +0000

After writing that last blog post, feeling quite sorry for myself (My days as a bookseller are all but over... back of the hand to forehead, fade to black...), what do I do next? I get right up the next morning and, in the course of delivering three paintings for a group exhibit, find myself accidentally attending three book sales in quick succession. That may just be a record, for me. One, American Legion sale. Two, Unitarian church sale. Three, local library sale. At the first, books were one dollar per bag. The quality of available books reflected that price, but I managed to fill a bag anyway (Oxford Companion to the Mind, a nice hardcover Miss Read omnibus, a book about altered books, a few decent children's titles). The second sale was the best of the three - just good solid stuff everywhere I looked. I bought two cartons, hardcovers were a dollar and paperbacks fifty cents. Best book - Ryan found it, I must say - a very nice first edition in jacket of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Third sale, I bought two more cartons of books. Then I dropped off my paintings at the exhibit and waltzed off to enjoy the beautiful summer afternoon, feeling like a million bucks. Thus I continue my double life.

A year in the life

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:37:00 +0000

A strange anniversary of sorts, today. One year ago this afternoon I was handing over the keys to my bookshop, after emptying it out and cleaning up the final remnants of book dust. It's taken most of this year to get my shop stuff sorted out, and I'm nearly there, despite still having some excess furniture and a few stacks of boxes that refuse to unpack themselves. The books turned out not to be a big problem. Because much of my inventory has landed at the Antiques Marketplace in Bangor, a multi-dealer shop where I rent a booth. I rent space and stock it, the shop is open every day, but I don't have to be there myself. Ideal. Here's one view of my booth:

I manage to fit a few thousand books into this space, and sales have been steady, considering my books are mostly your standard run-of-the-mill used hardcovers. (Also considering nearly anything run-of-the-mill can now be bought on Amazon for a dollar. Ho hum.) Another view:

I tend my booth once every two weeks. I take in any new books I happen to have bought, and rearrange things, and tidy up. The rest of the time I almost forget I'm a bookseller, I'm so wrapped up in painting. To wit, what I'm thinking about today, somewhat sadly: one of the biggest surprises of my life thus far was the time - it wasn't an exact day, more like a distinct suspicion that grew undeniable - I realized that having a bookshop of my own wasn't going to happily occupy me for the rest of my life. It came as quite a shock to find out I had other fish to fry. After all, I'd spent the previous twenty years of my life fairly obsessed with all things bookish, so it made sense to me that this trend would continue indefinitely. I don't know what did it, finally. The cost of doing business? A few great years (financially) at the shop, then a few not so great years? An internal imperative to pursue painting full-time? Our moving house, away from Bangor, to the coast? A gradual disenchantment with the book-buying public? The relative boredom of online selling as a way of life?

Most of those things, I suppose. Though I'm not the type to stop doing something just because of some minor disenchantment - I'm much too much of a romantic optimist for that. So I'm still figuring it out. I haven't ruled out the possibility of having a bookshop again someday. With an art gallery attached.

A painter-friend asked me recently what I would be doing with my life if I wasn't a painter. I thought for a minute and couldn't come up with anything else. I'd already been a bookseller, you see...

The rain in Maine stays mainly in the plain

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:51:00 +0000

A quick note: last week's island exhibit was a success. The five paintings shown in my previous post: sold, sold, sold, sold, and sold. As well as three others, out of the twelve I had on display. I did lose one game of Scrabble, but then won a few, as well as having the geeky personal triumph of back-to-back bingos in one game: oranges and ravines. A first for me. Now I'm making plans for painting in August, if the weather will only cooperate. More rain falling today. In the midst of thick fog. I ask you.

Islesboro art exhibit

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:02:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:01:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:24:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:35:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:40:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:35:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:37:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:31:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:27:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:12:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:38:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:13:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:38:00 +0000

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

sarahsbooks@aol.com (sarahsbooks) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:08:00 +0000

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.