Monthly Archives: September 2014

On Your Mark

I keep several books on my nightstand. I read them at different times and for various reasons but I never read any of them in their entirety in one sitting. I suppose I could just keep an eReader on my nightstand and jump around from digital book to digital book. But I appreciate the printed page, the sight, smell, feel and heft of a traditional book in my hands. Because of my fondness for printed books, with covers and spines and pages I can turn, I have a collection of bookmarks to keep my place in each edition.

Bookmarks should be as carefully chosen as the books themselves. No dog-eared corners, paper clips or indiscriminate inserts for my books. My bookmarks are made of cloth or paper or leather or metal. Their designs may be geometrical or symbolic or illustrative. Some have messages, poems or quotes. Some have fringes or attached ribbons. Some of my bookmarks were given to me as gifts, which add to the pleasure of their use, remembering the person and circumstance of each gift. I’ve also found great pleasure in choosing bookmarks that evoke some pleasant emotion or introspective thought every time I see them.

A bookmark is the familiar welcome to whatever new world the reader is about to enter. Treat yourself to one every now and then. Treat someone you care about to one. Places that sell bookmarks include bookstores, stationery stores, museums and online. Or make your own. Whether your bookmark is traditional or whimsical, let it express who you are as a reader.

Quotable

And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I, my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost.

– Simon and Garfunkel, The Dangling Conversation, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

The disadvantage with people is that you can’t put bookmarks in them and set them aside till you want them again.
– Orson Scott Card, Treasure Box

Gone Fishin’

I’m taking a 2-week break from blogging. No, not vacation. Fishin’ for book sales as part of a 2-day Tyrone Power Centennial Celebration in Wilmington, North Carolina. For information about the two events taking place, visit TCM News. The lead story and the third feature story are two examples of how to promote a book by relating it to other events.

My weekly blog will return September 28th.

Falling for Autumn

More than any other season, autumn is the most emotionally complex, releasing the full spectrum of human sentiments. Some view it as a beginning; the Jewish New Year begins in autumn, as do school years, football and basketball seasons. Some regard it as the season of abundance when the harvest comes in. Yet others sink into melancholy as sunlight hours decrease and the chilling of the air portends the arrival of winter. People refer to their later years as the autumn of their lives. Nature mercifully provides a burst of color in this season, a visual kiss before baring the landscape and chasing us indoors.

Not surprisingly, autumn generously lends itself to literature and is well represented in poetry, novels and short fiction. Browning (both Robert and Emily), Frost, Keats, Sandburg, Shelley and Whitman are some of the notable poets who have woven autumn into their work. To Autumn by Keats (1795-1821) lusciously details the season from beginning to end, creating an allegory for aging and death.

Novels that use autumn to great effect include Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Lee’s East of Eden, Eco’s The Name of the Rose, Marquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch and Irving’s spooky The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Some authors are closely associated with autumn through their writing; they include Poe, Doyle, du Maurier and Stephen King.

Before you know it, you’ll be donning sweaters, raking leaves, enjoying everything to do with apples, spending more time indoors and looking for activities that lift the spirit and warm the soul. What a great time of year to immerse yourself in good books connected to this most interesting of seasons.

Quotable

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. – Albert Camus
Autumn … the year’s last, loveliest smile. ― William Cullen Bryant
I loved autumn, the one season of the year that God seemed to have put there just for the beauty of it. ― Lee Maynard
[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air … Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer. — Wallace Stegner

Recommended

Check TCM News for information about the two-day Tyrone Power Centennial Celebration in Wilmington, NC, on September 18th and 19th, where you can purchase a collector’s quality limited first edition of Searching for My Father, Tyrone Power by Romina Power. Tyrone Power’s children will be at the events honoring their father and signing books.

If you live or work in or near Milwaukee, mark October 18th on your calendar. The Charles Atlas Art Museum will celebrate the Tyrone Power Centennial with a reception, film historian Dale Kuntz’s interview with actress Taryn Power Greendeer and a screening of the Oscar-nominated classic, Suez. The collector’s quality limited first edition of Searching for My Father, Tyrone Power by Romina Power will be available for purchase and autographing by Taryn.

For more information about these events and the book, contact
tyronepower.firstedition@gmail.com