SIMON SAYS by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Agatha, Anthony and Macavity award-winning investigative reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan is on the air at Boston's NBC affiliate. Her work has resulted in new laws, people sent to prison, homes removed from foreclosure, and millions of dollars in restitution. Along with her 26 EMMYs, Hank’s won dozens of other journalism honors. She's been a radio reporter, a legislative aide in the United States Senate and an editorial assistant at Rolling Stone Magazine working with Hunter S. Thompson.


Her first mystery, the best-selling PRIME TIME, won the Agatha for Best First Novel. It was also was a double RITA nominee for Best First Book and Best Romantic Suspense Novel, and a Reviewers' Choice Award Winner. FACE TIME and AIR TIME are IMBA bestsellers, and AIR TIME was nominated for the AGATHA and ANTHONY Award. (Of AIR TIME, Sue Grafton says: "This is first-class entertainment.")

 

Her newest, DRIVE TIME, earned a starred review from Library Journal saying it “puts Ryan in a league with Lisa Scottoline.” And Breaking News! DRIVE TIME was just nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Mystery of 2010.


Hank's short story won the AGATHA, ANTHONY and MACAVITY for Best Short Story of 2009.


Hank is on the board of New England Sisters in Crime and the national board of Mystery Writers of America.  Her website is http://www.HankPhillippiRyan.com







SIMON SAYS

By Hank Phillippi Ryan


I’m a little starstruck.


Back in the um, sixties, when I was just learning about the world and about writing and about how we’re all connected, I of course fell in love. With Paul Simon. 


I don’t remember the first “record” (remember records?) I ever bought—it might have been Lets Twist Again.  (Which I should have realized was a precursor to being a mystery author—“the twist” being such a critical part of any such novel.  But I, as usual, digress. ).  And of course I remember the Beatles—those of us from a certain era can certainly bring back the memory of that first earful of the Beatles.


But I do remember the first song lyrics that really bowled me over. It was Sounds of Silence. I was a bookish kid, always reading and hyper-thoughtful and all that. And Sounds of Silence—wow.  “Hello, darkness, my old friend?” Yikes.  Paul Simon got me. And didn’t let go.  And the idea of lyrics as literature, lyrics as poetry, lyrics as just as gorgeous and complicated and compelling as any good novel—began to evolve in my head.


Remember Paul Simon’s American Tune?


 Many’s the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home


And “America”?


Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together

(I promise this has a point.)


Even though my career took a different path, I always wanted to be a mystery author. And when you think about it –being an investigative journalist—as I’ve been for the past thirty-plus years and being a mystery author are actually similar.


Because they’re all about tell the story. Right? With compelling characters, and important conflicts, and in the end, there’s change and if you’re lucky, justice. Whether its fact, or fiction, we try to tell the story. In the most efficient, most succinct way. In the sparest possible way. The most power in the fewest words.


And Paul Simon’s lyrics, always seemed to do that.


In The Obvious Child, on a man’s life journey:


Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself
How it's strange that some rooms are like cages


Boy in the Bubble-where the universe and our place in it are put into perspective


The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky


So you can imagine my delight, as a fan of Paul Simon’s for so many years, to be invited to a very exclusive discussion-seminar he was giving in Lyrics as Literature.

 

The other panelist—the Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon.  

 
About two hundred people, at the most, were individually escorted into a smallish room at the JFK Library, and I must say, I was nervous.  Would I be able to ask him a question? What would I ask? Maybe about--The Boxer? Where does a story-song like that come from, and how is it crafted?



I am just a poor boy.
Though my story's seldom told,
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles,
Such are promises


But most important, what could I learn about lyrics as literature? I knew, I just knew, that Paul Simon would have something I could take away and use. (I know, it would be ironic here if it turned out that didn’t happen, and he was boring and pompous and selfish. But for once, irony does not win. He was brilliant and thoughtful and astonishing.)  Remember Kathy’s Song?


And as a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme.


So out he comes, all kind of shabby-in-a-cute-way looking, and smiling, and with a fleece and a battered old hat, and I’m fumbling in my purse for my camera thinking—I’m going to do it, I don’t care I’m going to get a photo! And my husband is poking me with an elbow—shush, don’t take a picture.  So I held off, (briefly) and took notes instead.

Paul Simon first quoted Coleridge—that writing is “trying to put the best words in the best order.”


He talked about being in the zone—“As a writer, I’ve experienced that a few times. And that’s the beauty, isn’t it? When you’re starting from scratch, that’s the start of something interesting. If I knew what I was doing, what’s the point?”


How do you know if a song will be good? “You can’t know. It’s a mystery. That’s what’s so great about it. But you can access bliss. If you’re lucky, you can find it. That’s WHY you do it. Just to catch a glimpse of it.”


He was asked—is there anything you wish you could take back?  He thought about it, smiled, then said, “I’d prefer not to tell you. Anyone can be bad. So why should I be ashamed?”


Do you know when you’re good? He smiled, and admitted—“You start to recognize it.” He said when he wrote in Graceland  ‘And I see losing love Is like a window in your heart’:  “I had to sit down.”


And when he wrote ‘Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down,’  he said to himself, “Well,  that’s better than you usually do.”


I didn’t get to ask a question, but I didn’t care. He said he “…wasn’t sure he believed in the muse, but what the heck. Can’t hurt.”


And here’s the point of the whole thing:


 “If you believe in the Muse,” Paul Simon said, “the Muse may believe in you.”


And let me just say—I left the room, clutching my camera. Thinking about my new book. Believing. And humming:


Still crazy
Still crazy
Still crazy after all these years…

 So--what's your favorite Paul Simon song?    Do you think of lyrics as literature? 


 

How a Poet Became a Mystery Writer by Elizabeth Zelvin

 Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York City psychotherapist whose story, “The Green Cross,” is up for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story, her third nomination in this category. Her mystery series about recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler includes Death Will Get You Sober, Death Will Help You Leave Him, and the forthcoming Death Will Extend Your Vacation.  You can read “The Green Cross” and learn more about Liz and her writing at www.elizabethzelvin.com. She blogs on Poe’s Deadly Daughters. 

 

How a Poet Became a Mystery Writer

Elizabeth Zelvin

I found out my host today, Kaye Barley, liked poetry when she mentioned on Facebook that she’d been reading the work of former poet laureate Billy Collins. She, in turn, didn’t know that I’d been a poet for more than thirty years. I sent her a copy of my second book of poetry, Gifts and Secrets: Poems of the Therapeutic Relationship. And voilà! I knew what I’d write about for my guest appearance on her blog.

Although I became a poet long before getting my first mystery published, I discovered mysteries a decade before I started reading poetry. I was a college English major who chose the field because I loved reading novels. I remember saying, “I don’t have a poetic sensibility,” meaning that I had to study poetry but didn’t get it, probably because my male professors never taught the accessible, deeply felt poetry I could have related to. My conversion to mystery reader came right after college, when someone handed me a copy of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Murder Must Advertise. And I started writing poetry a decade later, eventually having many poems in journals and two books published by a good small press. I wrote three mysteries during the same period, but none of them found a publisher, which is probably a good thing.

For me, poetry and fiction are connected in a number of crucial ways: story telling, voice, and accessibility. I’m proud to say that nobody has ever said, “I didn’t understand your poem.” My poems are about people (myself or others) to whom something happens. So are my novels and short stories. My goal as both poet and fiction writer is to move readers (or listeners) to laughter and tears. On occasion, I’ve achieved that goal, and it means far more to me than financial success—luckily! Many of my poems end with a punch line, often a line taken from real life speech. That’s not too different from the proverbial “twist at the end” of a good short story. When I discovered flash fiction, I was confident that I could meet the challenge of telling a story in less than a thousand words because, as a poet, I’d told stories in a hundred or two hundred words.

I’ve written both poetry and fiction on the themes I feel passionate about, including alcoholism and recovery, relationships, being a woman, and being Jewish. With Passover only a week away, I’ll share two poems that I like to read at our family’s Seder. The first, “Passover,” recounts some of my own family’s history and appeared in my first book of poems, I Am the Daughter. The second, “Miriam,” turns an incident from the Exodus involving the sister of Moses into a character-driven story. It first appeared in the journal Poetica, and I would be delighted for readers to incorporate it into their own Seder.

Passover

my father revels in his role of patriarch

in velvet skullcap and white turtleneck

he looks, by some irony, like the pope:

He works for one of our boys, says my father

this is his night in this house of women

who snub patriarchy on all occasions

whose strength overflows the crucible

of faith and family it is his night

to make it sing

we break unleavened bread together

without politics

he is telling it for all of us

the only grandchild

(Do I have to listen to the boring part?)

my mother, the proud Hungarian

with her doctorate and law degree

for whom even the prayer over the candles

—women’s work—remains a mystery

for me, who never went to synagogue

who never suffered as a Jew

for my Irish lover, here for the first time

to whom I am serving up my childhood

on the Pesach plates

for Aunt Hilda, who married out

and Uncle Bud, who was my friend who isn’t Jewish

thirty years ago

at 79 my father has forgotten stories

muffs the accent sometimes the punchline

no longer knows the name of every lawyer in New York

but tonight he is clear as wine fresh as a photograph

confident and plump as the turkey itself

awaiting its turn in the kitchen

tonight he is the raconteur I remember

as cherished and familiar as the books the cloth the china

the Hebrew words I cannot understand

the melody I miss at anybody else’s Seder

that my father and Aunt Anna with her trained soprano

learned in Hebrew school as children

all I have traveled back, back to see and hear

measuring his audience

expanding in the warm room like love

my father pours the wine

skips the prosy rabbis arguing

and tells instead the illustrated Bible story:

Moses in the bulrushes cruel Pharaoh the Red Sea parting

Let my people go

or I’ll give you what for

says my father

Miriam

the men sit perched on rocks

their faces grimed

furrowed with runnels of sweat

their sandals crusted in Red Sea salt

stunned by their change of fortune

the power in Moses’ staff

the thunder of the sea overrunning Pharoah

the scream of terrified horses

the crack of chariots breaking up

the wall of water at their heels

they stare outward into the desert

will not meet one another’s eyes

Miriam moves among the women

offering one the water skin

another a cloth to wipe her dusty feet

a quiet word here

there a hand pressed gently on a shoulder

crouched where they dropped when Moses called a halt

they have instinctively formed a circle

Miriam completes her round

pours the last few drops of water

on a corner of her shawl

passes it across her face

shaking off weariness like a scratchy cloak

she gathers them with her eyes

her slow smile blossoms

“Ladies,” she says, “we’re free!”

“Who wants to dance?”

Kitties by Kate Gallison

Kate Gallison is a writer, a joker, and the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of a convicted Salem witch.  As Irene Fleming, she writes about a plucky movie director in the early days of film. The Edge of Ruin appeared last spring. The sequel, The Brink of Fame, comes out in August of this year. See more about her and her work at http://www.kategallison.com

Kitties 

by Kate Gallison

I thought I'd write about some of my kitties today. Here's a picture Harold took of me about thirty years ago with the first cat we owned together, the lovely Persephone, our furry little child substitute before John was born. (She never completely got over him, but that's a story for another time.) 

We were visiting friends in the country. Someone said there was a catbird meowing in a tree outside. On closer inspection the bird proved to be a kitten that some heartless wretch had abandoned in the woods. Her poor little tail had been bitten off. Our household was catless at the time, and so we brought her home. I never feel that it's a real home without a cat. She lived long and prospered, surviving the birth of John, the move to Lambertville, and even the coming of Rex.

Rex was given as a kitten to our bachelor neighbor in the row house next door. The neighbor was not totally committed to him, and so Rex found his way between the joists and over the wall until he came to the top of our cellar stairs. John, then four years old, opened the door and let him in. A bowl of cat food! He was in cat heaven.

My feeling was that one cat is plenty, and so I took him back to the neighbor. Again and again. When I saw the neighbor moving out I offered him a carrier I had lying around, just to be sure he took the kitten with him.

"No, he'll be fine," the guy said. He got in the car, and, oops! the kitten slipped out of his hands. He drove away.

 

"What do you want to call the cat?" I said to John.

"Rex," he said. And so he became John's cat, to be immortalized in many a grade-school drawing. Persephone didn't like him much, especially as he grew big and bullied her.  One year he disappeared for a month, only to be discovered in the duct work of the house-in-progress across the street. The builder fed and watered him but couldn't catch him until he set a have-a-heart trap. We were happy to see him again; I thought sure he was dead.

In time Persephone grew old and actually did die. My grown son Charles, a passionate rescuer of kittens, came upon a litter of black ones that some motorcycle dame was giving away and took a few to distribute to good homes.

"I don't need any more cats," I said. "One is plenty."

"Yes, you do. Here."

That was Shadow. She's still with us. She bullied Rex, who died of old age, and was in turn bullied by Butterball, a delicate little white kitten John found wandering in the park (he called him "Princess") who grew to be a big fat flame-point Siamese. He died young. I miss him. See how relaxed he looks. I do like the kitties, even though they make me cough and sneeze. But one is plenty.

"You should buy a red dress" by Rosemary Harris

Rosemary Harris writes the Dirty Business mystery series . Her debut novel, Pushing Up Daisies, was nominated for both the Anthony and the Agatha for Best First Novel and is now available on Amazon Kindle.  Visit her on Facebook at Rosemary Harris Writer or on her website at www.rosemaryharris.com. She regularly blogs at www.jungleredwriters.com

"You should buy a red dress"

by Rosemary Harris
 

A few years back I was in a bar, waiting for a friend. It was late afternoon, too late for the lunchtime crowd and far too early for the bar’s hipper clientele, but it was a time when I was working freelance and by 3:30 or  4pm I needed to hear the sound of another human voice even if it was only one saying “What’ll it be?”
 

I was two sips into my Amstel when a familiar-sounding voice came from the other end of the L-shaped bar. It was dark and the speaker’s face was in the shadows.  He leaned forward in his seat, raised his glass and spoke again.
 

“You should buy a red dress.”
 

Despite the limited visibility I could see who it was. He was an actor. One I’d seen in many films, including one which had won him an Oscar.  Was he hitting on me or was this serious fashion advice? I’d recently been told by a good friend that I wore too much black, so I was sensitive. Her exact words were that I was "starting to look like Johnny Cash."
 

The speaker went on the say most women should own one as a matter of course, but it would work particularly well with my coloring. (Maybe he was coming on to me.)
 

I mumbled a reply – probably the very witty “thank you.” He stayed at his end of the bar and I stayed at mine until the friend I’d been waiting for arrived and we moved to a nearby table. I did my best to be a good listener and nod at the appropriate times but I couldn’t get my mind off the man and his comment. He spoke to no one else and at some point when I looked away, he left.
 

Every once in a while I’d think of the incident. I never bought red dress. Until last year.
 

I was gearing up for the now annual round of conferences, banquets and activities that surround a new book release and I was deciding on my uniforms – the two or three outfits that will crisscross the country with me – that I feel thin in but will be forgiving if I have the occasional minibar dinner of Pringles with a cookie chaser.
 

And there it was. At the top of the escalator. Calling me. Red. And spandex. It was like nothing I’d ever owned before. I saw myself as Scarlett O’Hara entering Miss Melly’s. Bette Davis shocking her family going to the ‘lympus Ball. Where on earth would I wear a red spandex dress? I had no trips to Vegas planned. It didn’t matter. I had to try it on.
 

I took the dress – in three sizes as well as the more conservative black version - into a surprisingly large and comfortable room. There was even an upholstered chair. And the lighting was golden. It would, of course, be an exaggeration to say that my winter white skin looked like Giselle Bundchen’s but it was closer to hers than to say,..Helena Bonham Carter’s. These people knew how to make a sale.
 

I wriggled into the dress. Was I hallucinating? Did it really look good? Why hadn’t I listened to that man earlier? Who knows what adventures I might have had? I was married now – did I still need a red dress?  Yes.

 

The dress hung in my closet for four months – the tags still on, mocking me every time I reached inside for some safe, boring black outfit. Then the email came. Did I want to attend the RT Booklovers Convention?  If you can't wear a red spandex dress there you shouldn't own one. 
 

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”  At the last moment, I grabbed a black jacket in case I got cold feet in the hall or in the elevator. Outside my room, I looked over the hotel’s railing and saw people dressed as Victorian prostitutes, pirates, vampire dominatrix. My little red dress was as shocking as an outfit from Coldwater Creek.  I wore it again the following week at Malice Domestic, but since then it’s hung in the closet , not quite the wedding dress in a giant box under the bed but with almost the same mystical status.
 

Why am I writing about a red dress? Because one features prominently in my latest book, Slugfest, where among other things, amateur sleuth Paula Holliday learns about the power of being a woman in red.

The Suck Fairy

There's been an interesting discussion  going on at DorothyL regarding re-reading some favorite books - children's books in particular.  A member (Thank you, Jane!)  pointed out this wonderful piece written by Jo Walton, science fiction and fantasy writer.   

Ms. Walton has a theory about why this happens.   


If you've tried to re-read a much loved book and find it suddenly disappointing and the magic all gone, it might just be because of The Suck Fairy.  I'm a believer!  Read it yourself, and see if you don't agree  -  http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/09/the-suck-fairy

I was not familiar with Ms. Walton's work before this evening, but after reading this piece, I certainly intend to look for her novels, along with her poetry.

Strong Women by Mary Jane Maffini

Lapsed librarian and  former mystery bookseller Mary Jane Maffini rides herd on three series: Charlotte Adams is a professional organizer in upstate New York; lawyer Camilla MacPhee snoops around Canada's capital; and Fiona Silk is the most reluctant sleuth in West Quebec.  She’s now collaborating with her daughter on a book collector series from Berkley Prime Crime (2012), writing as Victoria Abbott.  She’s also turned out nearly two dozen short stories, including the Agatha nominated “So Much in Common” from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  You can read the entire story on the website at www.themysteryplace.com/eqmm/excerpts/excerpt4.aspx

MJ lives and plots in Ottawa with her long-suffering husband and two princessy dachshunds.  You can also find her at www.maryjanemaffini.com or blogging regularly at www.killercharacters.com, www.mysteryloverskitchen.com and www.mysterymavencdn.blogspot.com
 

She’s really excited that The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder, the fifth Charlotte Adams book will hit the shelves Tuesday, April 5th!

 

STRONG WOMEN

by Mary Jane Maffini

Mystery fiction is populated by strong, determined women. Oh sure, there’s the occasional bubble-head, but really, female protagonists tend to be the kind of women you can count on in a crunch, say if someone you love is staring down the wrong end of the barrel of a gun. I’m talking about women who do what needs to be done to solve a crime, save a life, bring a villain to justice. The whole shebang. Women who remind us readers that we are, as individuals, often much more powerful than we realize.

Where do these fictional women come from? What do we writers draw on when they come up with the somewhat larger than life (but still usually slender) female characters who live in our favorite books?

Sometimes we model characters on our friends, women who are passionate about their jobs and committed to their families, but still always there for us in a crunch. Sometimes, we look to public figures who are worth watching. Recently, there have been a few heroic women who’ve stepped into terrifying situations to whack at mass murderers with their handbags. Now that takes guts. Other times, a courageous protagonist may represent the person we wish we were. But often our heroic characters are based on early influences. I know that’s true in my case.

Our family legend has it that my grandmother, the splendid Louise Ferguson, walked twenty-five miles, mostly uphill, on Sunday to teach in her small school in a mountain village. At the end of the week, she walked down that mountain road and home.  It was 1900 in rural Quebec. Stranger things happened. Was it true? Who knows. It certainly may have been and her grandchildren wanted it to be.

Louise Ferguson loved poetry and telling stories. She was tall and slender and had great dignity. She could rattle off a dozen stanzas of any Tennyson poem faster than a speeding train. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that she was courted by and married the very handsome William Ryan who was doing well with his logging business.  Louise kept her figure despite eleven babies in fourteen years. When William died after a logging accident, Louise was left on her own with nine children under fourteen, including year-old twins and another on the way. She lived with her in-laws in the Ryan homestead.  This was not such a happy situation with William gone. And Louise wasn’t one to let people tell her how to live her life, it seemed. She liked to run her own show. She knew who she was. She had a spine of steel. Soon she was on her own looking for a new place to live.

 

Louise’s brothers built her a farmhouse on a hill overlooking her beloved Restigouche River and she raised the children on her own. They were a tight knit family, all attractive and not without their dramatic moments. As far as I could tell, they all inherited her sense of humor.

I remember her best in her eighties, with great posture, dignity and a wicked sense of humor. Although she was always busy knitting, writing letters or reading, I never spotted her doing a tap of housework. I planned to emulate that lifestyle when I grew up. Once, when I was moping about some boy, she took me aside and whispered, “Men are like buses. There’s always another one coming along shortly.”   I made sure this made it into my fiction!

I loved her for many reasons, but especially her spellbinding ability to tell stories. In her stories tiny rabbits, sneaky foxes, bewildered woodchucks and larcenous squirrels lived lives full of romantic escapades, dark forest politics and daily dangers. We would hold our breath as small children. Would Daisy Rabbit escape the clutches of Reddy Fox?  Would that chattering squirrel lead to more trouble for the chucks?  Would all the trees be cut down, ruining the habitat? And where was Peter?  Had something happened to him? The suspense practically did us in.

She never ran out of stories or spirit or her sense of mischief.  She valued her friendships all her life. It amused her to suggest to her tall, elegant daughters that she was contemplating a walk to her friend Mina’s house. As Mina Adams lived three miles along the highway, the ensuring dramatics always made good watching, maybe because Louise was eighty-four and the highway was full of hairpin turns and careening logging trucks.  Shortly after, she’d be chauffeured up the road to Mina’s in style. Of course, she could have merely asked any family member to drive her, but where would be the fun in that?

I owe her a debt for humor, loving to read, seeing the healing value of a story and for hitting her eighties with her humor and intelligence as sharp as ever. I am absolutely certain that she would have been level-headed, brave, clever and resourceful if she’d come face to face with a villain with nothing but a handbag, a knitting needle or a volume of poetry.

I know she lives on in the character of several of my characters, including Violet Parnell, from the Camilla MacPhee mysteries, who has just hit her eighties and has no plans to slow down.  But there’s something of Louise Ferguson Ryan in my younger female characters, like Charlotte Adams. Charlotte’s not a quitter either and in every book she must walk up the symbolic mountain in the pursuit of the mystery and then walk down again. Charlotte knows who she is, has a spine of steel and relies on her sense of humor and her friends. She had a great role model.

Thank you, Louise Ferguson Ryan, for everything. May you influence my mysteries for many years to come!
 

 

Just a Book?? And Time for a Give-Away

The Winner of the Book Give-Away is Kari Wainwright.

Kari - send me (barleykw at appstate dot edu) your address and I'll put your copy of

Susan Isaacs' AS HUSBANDS GO

in the mail

Congratulations!  and thanks very much for playing - it was fun!

I'm a lover of books.

But, to me - there are books and then there are books.

Some are special simply because of what they are. Books which have, in some way, touched me.  Touched me deeply enough that's it's important to me to have them close by.   A couple of books falling into this category are "Five Smooth Stones" by Ann Fairbairn, and "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows to name just two.  Two of the books that will, as my friend Nan says, go to the old folks' home with me.

A few weeks ago, I heard from BookPage that I had won 10 books for responding to one of their questions.  That was a bunch of fun.  The books arrived  -  brand new.  Most of them nice hardcover books.  Some of them are books I've already read, some of them I already own.  All of them what I would call very good books.  But - "just books."  They'll make wonderful gifts for friends and family.  And, I love that.  I love books and I love giving books to people I care about.  And sometimes I have give-aways here.  Come to think of it, I haven't done that in a long time - it may be time to do that.  Like now!

Just leave a comment and I'll toss it into my virtual hat.  I'll draw a name on Sunday and I'll come back and post that name at the top of this blog entry.  If you see your name, send me an email with your snail mail address and I'll send you a first edition hardcover copy of Susan Isaacs "As Husbands Go," which received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly.   

There I went off on one of my tangents . . .

Back to the subject at hand . . .

On the other hand  -  - 

         some books are quite special (to me) for yet another reason.

A couple weeks ago, I dropped my name in someone else's virtual hat to win a prize in a contest an author was having.  It was one of my favorite authors - and I already have all her books.  But the prize was one of her books personalized and autographed.  And I won!  And I was over the moon!  Yes, it's a book I already have, but that one doesn't have a nice note written in it from her to me.  The one she sent me is a book that will stay right here.  Always.  The other one that I'd already bought and read can now move along to a friend's house, but not the personalized one.  No siree.  That one joins a group of much treasured books that I will cherish forever.  Because instead of "just a book," each of those autographed books move into the realm of  "quite special."  They're books with a personal sentiment, memory, and/or story to go along with being "just a book."

I was surprised during a recent discussion at the blog where this contest was taking place when someone said they didn't understand why some people felt the urge, or the need, to have a book autographed.  They just wanted the book.  The author's signature didn't matter to them in the least.  And I've heard this sentiment expressed in discussions at DorothyL.

It floors me.

Now, I know I'm not the only person who loves having books around that have been signed by the author.  That notion can be easily validated by simply going to a book-signing event at a bookstore or a library.  People are there to see, and perhaps meet, an author whose work they admire.  They're there to have a book signed.

Laws, go to a book convention and witness how many people are willing to stand in long lines to have their books signed by their favorite literary heroes. 

But, obviously - there are a lot of folks who are just as happy with "just the book."

So now I'm curious and I'm hoping some of you will drop by to tell me how you feel about this.

If you're a book lover, do your signed books mean more to you than "just the book," or does it just not matter a whit one way or the other?

Collecting Books . . . and other stuff

We talked, a few days ago, about books and whether they mean more to us if they're inscribed and/or signed.

It was a good discussion, and the answers varied greatly.

And it got me thinking about how we collect "stuff."  Is it in our genes?  Are we either a collector, or not a collector.  If we start out collecting one thing, does it lead endlessly to more collecting? ? ?

Donald and I are collectors.  Actually, I should clarify that.  We used to be BIG collectors.  Always on the hunt.  The hunt was a big part of the fun of it.  Finding that elusive "thing," was exciting, but I think the hunt was more exciting because regardless of how pleased we were with our find, we were always back to the hunt quick-snap.  We're not doing quite as much hunting as we once were.  We've become small to teeny to itty bitty collectors.  For a couple of reasons.  One, as we've gotten older we've realized we might have enough "stuff," so what we do add to our collection needs to really speak to us.  Secondly, since we've moved to a much smaller house, those items have to not just speak to us, but speak very loudly.  (I much prefer the word "collector" to "hoarder," don't you?  I do NOT want those people who claim to help others get rid of their "stuff" to show up at our house to help us.  For real.)

Anyhooooo - - -

You know by now that I collect books.  I do give a lot of them away, but there are many I'll never part with.

And they're everywhere.

All over the house in every room except the bathrooms.

Donald is very tolerant of all this, seeing as how he's a bit of a collector himself - which is a bit of an understatement. 



Donald is a locksmith.

He's always been one who likes to take stuff apart and put it back together.  His folks tell me this has been going on since he was a little boy.  If I remember correctly, it started with a toaster.

Now, if you've looked inside an old padlock you'll see that all those little moving parts inside are teeny.  He loves this!  Loves finding a new one to take apart and then make a key for it that will move all those teeny little parts around.  Lordy, I hope he doesn't read this.  Since I don't understand the workings of the inside of a lock, there's no way I could describe it properly, and he would feel as though I have not learned my lessons well.   One of his very favorite things is to repair the locks on antique furniture and make a key so the lock will be functional again.  Not a lot of locksmiths enjoy doing this kind of work.  Truth be told, there aren't a whole lot who can do it, and even less who will do it for fear of damaging the lock or the piece of furniture.   Donald, on the other hand,  loves the challenge of it and is quite good at it.  All this has led to an extensive collection of antique locks and keys.

 

This, of course, is a teeny small sampling.  All you collectors out there understand, I'm sure, that not all of your collection is always able to be displayed, right?  Sort of like museums that have to keep a larger part of their collections hidden away in storage. 

So, while Donald is perusing the antique malls, burrowing around looking for locks and keys, I'm wandering about looking for books.

There's always room for another book or two.

Hmmmmm.  That's what I used to think.  And that's what's gotten me into this trouble.

Because there really isn't room for any more books.  And that's why they're now taking over.  And why we're now talking about what we're going to do about it.

But.

That's a problem for another day.

One of the things Donald and I both enjoy hunting for is a "Barley Jar."

You've seen them.

You know the canister sets you see in the antique stores?  The sets of 4 or 6 or 8 or even 12, or more. There's always a canister for flour, and for sugar, and sometimes one rice, and ocassionally, for barley.  Since Barley is our last name, it's a fun thing to hunt for.  Sometimes the antique dealers will gladly break up a set and sell just the Barley jar.  Sometimes though, they won't and they won't budge.

The first Barley jar was one Donald's mother gave him while we were dating.  His parents continued their hunt until all the Barleys had at least one.  We continued the hunt for awhile, but haven't found one that has spoken to us in quite a while.

And I was always looking for white pitchers.  Preferably ironstone.  My mom gave me my first one years and years ago, then out of no where, the whole world started getting interested in white ironstone pitchers and they became difficult to find.  And expensive.  Thankfully, I had all I wanted and needed by then.  Besides.  I could always buy another book . . .

So, tell me.

Are you a collector?

Of one thing or many?