Some mundane things about owning a small bookstore that I find very satisfying:

- The window lights at night;
- The sound of the door locking at the end of the day;
- Sweeping; and
- Finding interesting artifacts from other eras tucked away in used books.

Book Highlight ~ The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

Just watched KET's documentary on Kentucky author Walter Tevis. The man had a very interesting career to say the least.

www.pbs.org/video/walter...

I’ve really enjoyed Tom Wolfe’s out of context quotes in “The Bonfire of the Vanities” thus far:

“Who in the name of God would bring a half-eaten eight-ounce jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise to a public meeting?”

I kinda wonder whether Robert Hunter would have wanted everyone reading the book he locked away for most of his life. While some of it was definitely a chore, there was something sweet about reading the melodramatic, teenage dialogue of "The Silver Snarling Trumpet."

We were lucky enough to come across a bunch of books published in the early 60’s for the Time Reading Program. I love this series. Their books are absolutely beautiful.

“Betty told Pauline to shut up. Jenny told Betty to kiss her ass. Junior called L.C. a son of a bitch and Wilgus said goddamn. Delmer and L.C. were on their way outside to have a fistfight when old Grandma Collier told them all to hush their mouths.”

Four books I wanted to read from our latest scouting trip:

“Always, on their generation’s breaking wave,
men think to be immortal in the world,
as though to leap from water and stand
in the air were simple for a man. But the farmer
knows no work or act of his can keep him
here. He remains in what he serves
by vanishing in it, becoming what he never was.”

While reading this one I was reminded of something Tyler Cowen once said, “most books are, at best, articles.” This would have been a fine New Yorker profile, but not sure it needed to be a full book.

Still, interesting life of our Owsley cousin whose roots come from Kentucky.

This one’s probably going in the private collection.

“He wept out of bitterness and longing and despair; he wept from exhaustion and failure and the shattering naked conviction that nothing mattered….there was nothing in him at the moment, nothing but a vague anger, a deep resentment, and the origins of a vast hopelessness.”

Been reading Norman Mailer recently...watching this interview 20 years later is a little eerie, especially his view on how a war in Iraq could change America.

youtu.be/ouve-L18_Cc?...

This made me smile....

"Someone, somewhere, puts in the work of finding original facts, distributes them to a smallish crowd of news junkies and nerds"

The grim reality of what he's describing made me smile less.

“The kind of satisfaction a tone-deaf person might know in recognizing a piece of music.”

I’m not sure Mailer needed all 600+ pages, but then again I guess we wouldn’t get these descriptive gems otherwise

I've tried multiple times, but "Naked Lunch" is unreadable.

Jesse Stuart wrote the forward to this beautiful book, Louisville Scenes, that I bought today in the year 2024. I love you Jesse, and I sure hope you’re right but I kinda doubt it since I got it for $5.00. However, if true…Birdwhistell Books just had a really good day.