Wednesday, 7 April 2010

The Sarazens head without New-gate: resurfacing

Halp!
Friends, it's been a tough week. I did a freelance editing job over the long weekend and it was nothing less than hellish. It turns out that a fairly deep edit of 150 pages over 3.5 days was too much to ask of me or most people; editing shouldn't leave you feeling like you've been punched repeatedly in the face and kicked everywhere else. Next time, there will be some renegotiation.

Breathe
Now, I am back in the shoppe and it's very relaxed here right now. It is raining and very dark outside, which results in Torontonians either melting or staying inside with the good books they bought when it was sunny out.

I don't blame them, really, for staying in on days like this; wet pant-legs really are one of the most annoying things in this world. I just happen to come from a place where refusing to go out in the rain means you stay inside 5 of 7 days of the week, and so this sort of thing won't stop me. And besides, we know what happens in such situations: no fresh air and tv new books make Johnny any sane person go crazy.

As I am still totally a sleepy mess today, I'm grateful for the silence. I am also grateful for the fact that it is probably about to start thundering and lightning-ing out there. I absolutely love being in here when the weather is throwing a loud, angry fit. The mountains of books and rain on the windows put me in a very contented head-space, even if it is bad for business.

If the storm ends up directly over the store, that's even better; once when this happened, there was a thunder-crack so powerful that it made our "OPEN" sign shatter and fall to the floor!! Exciting times, good for reading ghost stories or novels by Yukio Mishima (for me, today, it's the latter).

What's new in bookstoreland
Well, not much. The cycle of buy books, sell books remains pretty consistent with, of course, ebbs and flows reflecting climatological events. One thing I have noticed lately, however, is that everyone and their dog is trying to sell their sets of encyclopedias. (You know there were too many door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen working in the '80s is so many dogs are finding themselves trying to get rid of the damned things!)

I've heard through the grapevine (because I refuse to use telephones) that even places like Goodwill won't take encyclopedias anymore - they just take up a lot of space and will absolutely never sell. And why would they? Even before the interwebs came along to make such things completely irrelevant, I always wondered how sensible it was to buy a stack of brutally heavy books that would be outdated in some ways before they even arrived at your house. Still, it hurts me to think of how many books, obsolete are not, must be ending up in the garbage right now.

This post was really leading up to the following
I've been keeping a file of the coolest place and street names I've come across in our online book-selling business and have a great collection for you today! Check it:

Stormville, NY
Citrus Heights, CA
Freedom, NH (yeah!)
Mystic, CT (oh YEAH!)
Volunteer Blvd, in a town in TN
Brigantine, NJ

And the last one seems too good to be true...wait for it...

Heffalump Rd, in rural SC. What! What genius of street planning went to A.A. Milne for names? Is there a Pooh Corner in this town? Can I marry him or her?? Such brilliance surely overcomes the hideousness of naming streets things like Factory Rd. I think the circle is complete.

PS-I shall, of course, keep this list of cool place and street names going and update in the future.

8 comments:

K said...

Thank you. I feel as if I just went on a mini-, cyber-vacation. K

Tony said...

If you are reading 'After the Banquet', then you have had your last warning ;)

Colleen said...

K: Rather!

Tony: My LAST warning? What was the first warning, and what was it for precisely?

FYI: I am reading Forbidden Colors, not After the Banquet.

Hannah Stoneham said...

I love the idea of Volunteer Boulevard! That is hilarious -

Stefanie said...

Heffalump Rd? Most excellent! Minneapolis street names are pretty boring since the city is laid out on a grid and most everything is numbered. But even the streets that get names aren't that interesting. At least it's easy to find your way around here though.

heidenkind said...

I heard of a very cool place name today--Embarrass, Wisconsin.

Tony said...

After all the other books, you beat me to recently, I was starting to look for cameras on my monitor ;)

Colleen said...

Hannah: I know - talk about a guilt trip! (har har)

Stefanie: I get the utility of the grid system but it offends my artistic sensibilities a little.

heidenkind: My god, what would it be like to live there??

Tony: Heh. We're on a cross-continental, cross-hemisphere wavelength. Groovy.
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