A while back I noted reading In Thackeray’s London, written and illustrated by Francis Hopkinson Smith. I’ve since had the good luck of finding In Dickens’s London, published by Smith the following year, in 1914. The book, for which I paid a little under eight dollars, arrived in yesterday’s mail. It’s beautiful, both sturdy and aromatic, with its complex old-paper smell, the kind one might expect from having been unopened […]
We broke the ice in the birdbaths and filled them with fresh water. The first drink was taken by a squirrel. Then a pair of juncos descended from the bare birches. They hopped around the rim, stopping for very quick small sips — stopping without stopping, you might say. More sun, more cold, not a drop of rain. The dry air inside makes the sinuses ache. My blood pressure was […]
A clear, chilly morning of thirty degrees. Out under the stars, I ran for the forty-second consecutive day, making six weeks of barefoot sandal running. I saw no one, and was met by only one car, which was driven by one of this country’s many thousands of “independent contractors” delivering packages. I’m about halfway through Melville’s Typee, the narrator of which has come to question who is truly civilized — […]
It’s much less what I’m reading, than the simple fact that I am reading, that I find remarkable. More than remarkable: holding a book in my hands, turning the pages, and making sense of what’s printed on those pages, is a miracle. How the books I read find their way to me, and come to a temporarily safe harbor within these walls, is a mystery. Though it appears that I’m […]
I finished pruning the fig tree. I don’t know how long it took, but I guess it to be around four hours, which includes cutting the brush into little pieces for the recycling bin. I did the work in three afternoon sessions. During the last session, I heard the sound of a mourning dove in flight, and looked up in time to see it winging its way north. A second […]
I’ll note here a pleasant, long overdue trip to the town of Lincoln City on the Oregon coast. It was a chilly, foggy drive, but by the time we arrived yesterday at about ten in the morning, the sun was shining brightly, the temperature was fifty degrees, and there was only a light breeze — a perfect day for sandals and a walk on the beach — after we’d visited […]
On the last day of the year, in a used bookstore we visit every so often in West Salem, I chanced upon an unread copy of a Library of America edition containing three works by Herman Melville, all having to do with the sea: Typee; Omoo; and Mardi. Priced at only eight dollars and fifty cents, the book was still in its original white slipcase, and its ribbon marker had […]
Every winter, I think about rearranging the more than three thousand books and two dozen bookshelves in this room. But other than minor changes — a stack here, a stack there — it ends up staying the way it is: familiar, visually pleasing, organized according to no specific plan other than a theme or author here and there, or a type of binding. If I’m counting correctly, I acquired forty-two […]
Rural beginnings — how they cling to one. I still have a good feel for the size of an acre, and imagine open fields planted in the crops we used to grow. And if I had a dollar for every time I’ve said, “That’s a good place for watermelons,” I’d be wealthy indeed — until I spent the money on books. Then I’d be really wealthy. A split and a […]
My reading life began early in childhood, with countless visits to our hometown library, the same library my mother frequented when she was growing up. I have no idea how many books I’ve read. I know others who have read more than I have, and who read more than I do, and who are better readers in terms of how much they can recall, and how well they can analyze […]
William Michaelian 