Category Archives: bookstore management

Erica Susan Jones’ Monday Book

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The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence againWhen I was a teenager, Penguin produced a range of classics for a pound a book. I’m not sure how mid-90s money translates across the Atlantic, but for this reader who’d only very recently discovered the joy of bookshops it was a revelation.
All of a sudden I went from being able to afford a book a month to what felt like an unlimited supply of new reading material. No matter that some of the classics I bought were as inaccessible to a teenage girl as A Clockwork Orange is to most human beings, I suddenly had the ability to visit a bookshop and buy more than one book. I browsed, I bought, I read.
Among these purchases was The Age of Innocence. If bookshops inspired my love of reading, it’s this book that opened my eyes to the possibilities of what books can hold. This book grabbed me, shook me, chewed me up and spat me out the other side, leaving an exhausted woman wondering what I could possibly read next that could ensnare me in such a way.
All this in what many misinterpret as being just another society love story.
In some ways that interpretation is correct. The main strand of the book is Boy Meets Girl, but the setting of that introduction (I don’t just mean 1870s New York) and the subtle storytelling are what make it so much more than a story of love versus responsibility. After all, this was the first Pulitzer Prize-winning book by a woman.
The Age of Innocence is the book I recommend and/or gift the most, and I’m currently re-reading it for a book club. For some, like teenage me, I fully expect them to comment on the love story, but I’m also looking forward to the other aspects they question: the freedom, or otherwise, of the different women; the rules that constrict our hero’s choices; and maybe even the impact today’s societal conventions have on our own lives – we’re technically more free than the characters in the book, but how much do we bind ourselves in our attempts to fit in?
Edith Wharton writes with intelligence and humour, encouraging her readers to question the sense of that world and its hypocrisies, and while her focus might have been a few centuries ago The Age of Innocence is as relevant now as it was then.
dolly readingErica Jones is a bookshop blogger, owned by a rescue cat called Dolly.
Feel free to either link to my blog as a whole or to this post: http://www.thebookshoparoundthecorner.co.uk/2014/02/the-little-bookstore-of-big-stone-gap.html

Bits and Pieces – –

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Jack makes his deadline in time for once – –

Just some random stuff about my week –

I finally woke up on Friday morning to no pain in my hip, then Saturday morning as well – so far it’s been six days with no pain. Yesterday I was at my chiropractor Dr Teri and told her the good news, adding “the Ibuprofen seems to have really helped”. “Yes” she said “maybe my adjustments did too”. Sometimes it’s just too easy to offend people unthinkingly – write one hundred times – I must think before – – –

A good few years ago I wanted a ‘parlor guitar’ so, when I flew anywhere I could put it in the overhead bin (having heard of and witnessed terrible things with checked instruments). I found a guy on-line who was in California and specialized in finding them in auctions and house clearances. A few weeks later I was the proud owner of a 1906 Lyon and Healy Lakeside. It was gorgeous, with a real punchy sound and is the only guitar I’ve ever seen with an oak back and sides. Sadly it deteriorated rather quickly until it became just a decoration in the bookstore. But it’s just been completely rebuilt by an expert luthier in Nashville and I’ll have it back next week!

I have a Martin D35 I hardly ever play so that will be sold to pay for the work on the Lakeside – – –

I’ve always had a strange attitude to jobs and tasks and will throw myself into some while pushing others to the back of the line. This week sees two of the pushed back ones finally struggling to the front. I got four grant applications for our Celtic festival written and sent off and tomorrow will see the start of our long overdue bookstore deep-clean. That will involve boxing up lots of books, then removing bookshelves from the walls and stacking them (and the boxes of books) out of the way. Then removing the quarter beads round the edge of the floor. Finally, the actual deep clean right into all the corners before replacing everything again!

Regular readers of this blog will know that Wendy is away from home for three months and at a goodly distance from here. This will be the longest time we’ve been apart in the almost twenty years we’ve been married and it’s a very strange experience for me. Some couples, I’m sure, have this kind of separation regularly and we’ve had shorter spells apart in the past, but this is different. We talk every day on the phone and message back and forwards on emails and messages, but it’s not the same as her actually being here. On the other hand, our terrier Bert and our bookstore cat Owen are in seventh heaven as they spread out over the bed every night – – –