Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Bookstore (Page 47 of 117)

Lunch: Before

All the changes to the website are causing updates that could be avoided if I could simply quit mentioning the image at the top of the page. In our last episode – involving puckering up at the Blarney Stone – there was a picture of Blarney Castle that I felt needed an explanation.

Well.

I should have left it alone. Next day, new changes. It’s still a nice landscape shot of Ireland until I can manage an outside shot of the bookstore. Raining today. Even while the sun is shining.

Go figure.

At any rate, I needed something to at least tie the picture to the shop, so I photographed my lunch. Cup o’ soup (White Cheddar & Potato), Ham & Cheese sandwich, and a side o’ chips. We call it the Every Day Special. It’s made fresh, to order. And not just the sandwich. That bowl of soup started out as russet potatoes earlier this morning. Peeled ’em. Cooked ’em.

Ate ’em. (Took the picture first, which I promise I don’t normally do at lunchtime. Thus: the title. Lunch: Before I ate it.)

Served the soup at lunchtime until it ran out. Irish stew is at the ready every day. Serving Monday through Friday at lunchtime.

Come visit and sit down for a spell. And maybe a cup o’ soup!

McHuston

Kiss the Stone.

As the story goes, if you pucker up and kiss the proper spot at Ireland’s Blarney Castle, you’ll magically receive the “Gift of Gab,” which allows you to deliver a load of blarney with eloquence. A fellow named John O’Connor described it well, pointing out that “Blarney is something more than mere flattery. It is flattery sweetened by humour and flavoured by wit. Those who mix with Irish folk have many examples of it in their everyday experience.”

During colonial times, there were enough Irish immigrants in America that many of the words they used were incorporated into our version of English. Except, when they said Blarney, it came to be repeated in a different way. You’ve may have heard someone express their skepticism with: He’s full of boloney! Here in the US the term Blarney became boloney and came to be synonymous with “full of bull.” A little less flattering than the original version implies.

In the image, the Blarney Stone is at the upper left of the tall square tower, incorporated into a battlement by Cormac Laidir MacCarthy, who built the place. According to the version related to me, Mr MacCarthy was involved in a legal dispute and sought the aid of Clíodhna, the Queen of the Irish hill faeries. (Back in Mr MacCarthy’s time, it was common to appeal to the benevolent figures in Irish mythology.)

Clíodhna told Mr Mac that if he would kiss the first stone he came across, he would be blessed with an eloquence that would aid in his courtroom presentation. He won his legal case, and later decided to add the magical stone to the uppermost area of the castle he was constructing.

There it remains.

Visitors to his castle are invited to lie down and give the stone a kiss to receive the gift of blarney. Of course, when I touched lip to rock, it simply recharged the thing. I was already full o’ gab, I suppose.

The point of the story?

Don’t really have one. It’s just an explanation as to the image that is currently at the top of the website. (Those of you who occasionally visit the pages may have noticed the hiatus in new posts, an interruption of several weeks caused by technical difficulties.) I’m still trying to restore the site, but there are still glitches. Blarney Castle serves to replace the mountain range that was the object of the last post, an image that is retired for the time being.

The shot is from a vantage point that most tourists will overlook. The car park (as they call it) is to the right edge and a lengthy path leads to the castle, between it and the tall round towers. You’d be needing your waders to take a similar photo.

Of course, you need hip-waders when you’re in the company of those of us spouting the blarney.

Ceci est un Blog, not Literature.

“Do you have Jane Eyre?” she asked, and I was about to answer when she finished her question. “In an older copy? Hardback?”

I was still sizing that up when she concluded: “In French?”

Getting past the surprise, I was flattered that she expected it possible to find a copy of that English literature title in French (or a French literature title in English). It’s a sure indication that our Broken Arrow, Oklahoma clientele is a discerning sort.

Regrettably, I let her down.

Had she been a little less specific, I could have offered Lettres et Poésies d’amour de Charlotte Brontë, a 1953 collection of Ms. Brontë’s love letters published in Belgium. There’s a copy of Moulin Rouge on the shelf as well (Paris, 1953). Wouldn’t do though.

C’est la façon dont le ballon rebondit. (That’s the way the ball bounces.)

Of course, the discriminating nature of this morning’s question is offset by the one posed by a gentleman the other day. He opened the door, stepped inside, put his hands on his hips, and gazed around from floor to ceiling.

“What is it you do in here, exactly?” he asked.

I was stumped by that one, I’ll admit. Had the answer until he tacked on the “exactly,” which had me mentally fishing for some concise description of what goes on – exactly – in a bookstore with bistro tables, where the proprietor rebinds books, edits manuscripts, and pursues research projects in between the cooking and the cleaning.

Should have just handed him a copy of Gabrielle Zevin’s homage to the independent bookstore, “The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry,” currently entrenched on the New York Times bestsellers list. Ms. Zevin obviously has a place in her heart for off-beat shops and a story that will appeal to readers – whether they own a bookstore or not.

In truth, I’m a little reluctant to recommend it. Could be I liked it because a lot of what happens at A. J. Fikry’s Island Bookstore is curiously familiar. Maybe not in exact events, but in the sorts of things that happen in the book shop. Then, there are the book-reader inside jokes and behind-the-counter details that are indigenous to the endangered species – bookseller.

Mr. Fikry is a curmudgeonly proprietor (and you may keep your comparisons to yourself), who finds life-redemption in the form of an abandoned child left in his book store. Although none of the reviews I encountered mentioned it, I can’t be the only one who was reminded of George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” Granted, Silas is the weaver of Raveloe instead of the village bookseller, but his stolen hoard of money is eventually forgotten when a child is left at his doorstep. Mr. Fikry finds public acceptance through the advice and counsel of the many neighbors who share their childrearing experiences, just as did Silas Marner. Despite the similarities, Ms. Zevin massages the plot into an original story that will endear itself to most readers.

You’ll find a first edition copy (with a custom plastic dustjacket protector) at below-publisher price, but it occurred to me as I set it out that A. J. Fikry encountered trouble in his offering of bestsellers in Ms. Zevin’s story.

“Seems like a lot,” says his customer, looking over the latest Alex Cross hardback. “You know I can get it cheaper online, right?” Mr. Fikry answers in a manner that you won’t hear in this shop.

I may be curmudgeonly, but politeness drills are staged each morning – part of what we do in here, Exactly.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!

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