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Guilty Pleasure

August30

                This morning we went out for breakfast with Chad and Becca.  They were in Cumberland yesterday afternoon for the closing on their house in LaVale.  It has been five months since Chad began working in Baltimore.  In mid-July they bought a house in Sykesville, Maryland, and two weeks later Becca left Cumberland and began a new job.  The only thing left was to sell their house here.  When it happened, it all happened very quickly.  The closing was supposed to be mid-September, but both parties were eager to conclude the purchase: the family who bought it was living in a tent, and Chad and Becca were paying two mortgages.  Their realtors were cooperative, and everyone worked together to make it happen sooner.  We are all grateful that the ordeal of uncertainty has ended so well.

                After breakfast, we drove to Frostburg so Chad could have a look at the Lyric building.  He did the design for its renovation, and it was under construction when he left his job here.  Unfortunately, it has not been completed yet, so he could not go inside, but we were able to look in the windows of the University bookstore that is to be on the lower level.

                On the way back to the car, Ted and I were drawn into the open door of Main Street Books.  We have over 2000 books, most of them cataloged and filed according to the Dewey Decimal System.  We certainly do not need any more.  In fact, we often tell ourselves that (for the most part) we are going to borrow books from our public library rather than purchase them.  We have even made a few sporadic efforts to weed our collection.  I actually found about twenty books to donate to the Cumberland Times-News used book sale last year!  The fact is, we are hopelessly addicted to books and bookstores.  When we go to Wisconsin to visit my family, we spend hours in Barnes & Noble, enjoying not only the books, but the frappuccinos, easy chairs, and abundant magazines.  There is nothing like that in Cumberland!  However, Frostburg may have something in some ways better:  Main Street Books, a small old-fashioned store with thousands of new and wonderful books presented in a delightful fashion. 

When I entered I immediately encountered a treasure chest of teen reads—some authors I recognized, but most I didn’t.  Near them was a display of multiple copies of a young adult book “soon to become a motion picture.”  I was pleased to note the title was one I had put on hold at our local library yesterday via the internet.  I paused to read the back cover, but walked away virtuously untempted.  The adult fiction shelves, all paperbacks, were shelved mostly with only their spines  visible in order to conserve space.  Apparently when a book is purchased, the store must buy another to replace the title.  Notes hung down randomly from the shelves with descriptions of a nearby book; for example,  “If you liked X, you will like Y” or, “One of our customers, Jane, recommends this book if you enjoy books about ____,”  and other intriguing descriptions.  These notes did not look or sound like the work of a mass marketer, but of a shop owner and his employees who genuinely love to read.  Near the cash register were three stacks of books for the book discussion groups to be held the next three months.  Oh, how I miss being in a book discussion group!  The September selection was on sale.  The easy chairs of Barnes & Noble were not present, but there were chairs (one with rockers) and small tables for reading comfort.  The store carries a few non-book items:  unique note cards and children’s items, for example.

After twenty minutes of browsing, I managed to escape without purchasing anything, but Ted picked up a book about a Norwegian Jew who was deported to Auschwitz yet somehow survived the Holocaust.  How could he resist?  It was about a Norwegian, about a concentration camp (we had just seen a former concentration camp in the Czech Republic), and it was on sale for 20% off.

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I am a Christian, a mother and grandmother, a sister, a daughter, a teacher, a widow, a friend. . .  My life is first of all defined by relationships–to God, to my family, to my students, to my friends. Of course, I am many other things: a reader, an e-mail writer, a piano player, and a somewhat reluctant traveler, for example.  And now I am a blogger.  I’m not sure why, except it seems to be a logical next step for someone addicted to e-mail.

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