BOOK GREED

Hi, readers -- and you Kindle folks, too.

At Acorn we have a customer -- a writer, book-critic, and a serious collector of special books in the field of literature -- who comes in about once a month for at least two reasons: 1/To see if we've lately bought any wonderful books that she might be interested in, and 2/To make a payment on whatever book she has on layaway. There's a shelf in our backroom that has her name on it, and it's been a long time since the shelf hasn't had at least one book destined for her amazing library. Each time she buys a book or two to take with her, we always ask if she needs a bag. She laughs a bit maniacally and clutches her books to her body with both arms and says excitedly, "I want to feel these books right next to me as I walk out of here!"

One evening last week as I arrived home on Riverhill Road in Upper Arlington after an enjoyable day in Booktopia, Linda greeted me with dancing eyes, animated with good news to share. "I went to the UA library today with my summer reading list, and I was so excited when I was able to find most of the ones I wanted! They'll be the ones I'll take on vacation! I couldn't wait to bring them home and with great anticipation take them to my chair, cats all around me, as anxious to spend time with me as I was to spend time with my new books."

Linda is a professor at OSU in the Women's Studies department. As such, she's always got some interesting writing project in process. This summer's paper has been on an unusual topic -- Calamity Jane. That's right, the wildest women of the wild west being written about by the Wild Woman of Riverhill. Last year we fortunately discovered the outstanding HBO series, "Deadwood". And one of the well-done characters was Martha Jane Canary -- "Calamity Jane". This spring, when Lin finished her latest book project -- a critical study of the 1939 movie "It Happened One Night", she turned her attention to Calamity Jane and the Black Hills, the Badlands, where the Old West met the future in notorious Deadwood, where Wild Bill was shot in the head and law and education and religion and barbed wire crept in as taming agents. Where Calamity Jane perhaps experienced some of what she claimed to have done -- a colorful mountain-woman dressed anonymously in never-changed men's buckskin and never-gone whiskey fumes.

Linda has had a ball living with Calamity in books and movies, and as a longtime reader about the West and a lover of old "B" westerns -- especially Roy Rogers, I was pleased with her new interest. We've watched each episode of all three seasons of "Deadwood" again with even more enjoyment than we did initially. We've seen Angelica Houston as Jane, and even Doris Day as Calamity, which just absolutely boggles the brain. This fall Linda will get to travel to Deadwood itself, 120 years after Calamity. Where Calamity delivered glorifying half-truths about her life as a frontier woman, Linda will be delivering a paper about Calamity's life at a literature conference in nearby Spearfish, South Dakota. I suggested that she buy a replica Calamity Jane outfit -- used, of course, and hopefully unwashed, to capture the true flavor of the times. We can play cowboys and cowgirls when she gets back. Now where did I store my Roy Rogers embroidered shirt?

She's just finished the CJ paper, and now it's summer reading time for the professor as we head into the last of summertime. This fall we'll be driving up to Lakeside, Ohio, for a much-needed R-&-R vacation, with no agenda except enjoying the peaceful, old community, founded by Methodists in the 1880s. From our cozy cottage we'll go for walks and bike rides and I'll photograph the beauty and cottages of a waterside community. We'll both work on various writing projects, one of our favorite ways to take advantage of endless hours without committment.

And we'll read. A lot. We'll read mysteries and essays and memoirs. Books with spiritual insights. We might even sample Julia Child's "The Art of French Cooking", inspired by the wonderful movie, "Julia and Julie". We've already begun decorating the dining room table with the first of many possible books to take along. Last year we were a little excessive and took a box of reading material each. You understand.

Running out of reading material on vacation ranks right up there with having your plane land in the Hudson or staying in a sleazy motel in 90-degree overnight heat and a busted A/C, a filthy tub, with yellow stains on the sheets to complement the bloodstains on the floor covering, which once might have been called a carpet. At least in that godforsaken place we had books to escape into.

So Linda's trip to the Upper Arlington library was the first of her foraging for vacation reading. to check out the books she'd had recommended by friends and colleagues and reviewers. Books to entertain and educate, to read as slowly or quickly as desired. To read with coffee in the morning and tea at night, and with an afternoon bottle of water overlooking the water. After dinner I'll pour her a Diet Coke and a single malt scotch for myself for twilight accompaniment. Hmmm, what kind of book goes best with a peaty scotch? Maybe an M. C. Beaton mystery or one of Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh-based stories.

Lin's enthusiasm for her just-acquired library books was overflowing. "It's like when I used to belong to a book club," she said, holding a handful with the familiar library markings on the spine. "The mailman would deliver a package of four or five books" -- and Lin made as if hugging the books to herself. "I wanted to grab them all and take them to bed...my treasure.

"It was book greed."

Amen.

For a great book on the old west, you can't beat Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove".

Bookstore George

PS: The photo is of Linda at the grand opening of the "new" Ohio State Library. More on that fabulous new facility later.
Copyright 2009