Bookstores Doing Just Fine, Thank You
July 30, 2008 | 3:45 pm
At least some are!
Amid the dire economic forecast, the ebook and ereader movement, and the almost irresistably deep discounts offered by online purveyers such as Amazon, in some places at least the traditional brick-and-mortar bookshops are thriving.
And I’m happy to report that the shops in Provincetown are among those doing well. Which is great, since there’s nothing like a new book to take to the beach for beach reading.
The oldest and most venerable of the shops is the Provincetown Bookshop, located on busy Commercial Street, which has been there since the 1930s and is still going strong, with an eclectic and marvelous selection of books. The Voyager, also on Commercial Street, specializes in gay and lesbian literature, and I’m seeing a steady stream of visitors there. Still further down Commercial Street is WomenCrafts, which doesn’t have the bookshelves that it used to but which is dear to my heart since they carried my first published novel back in the 1980s.
Recovering Hearts manages to be Buddhist- and Taoist-oriented gift shop and 12-step bookshop all in one, and while the tourists are heavily into the gifts, the locals frequent the bookstore portion. Small surprise: the Sunday morning AA meeting regularly attracts dozens of people in the summer.
And then of course there’s Tim’s Used Books, down an unassuming alleyway and located in an old house that has more twists and turns than some roads I’ve been on. I can spend hours, happily, in Tim’s, looking through out-of-print treasures. What am I saying: I can spend hours in any and all of the bookshops, each with its own distinctive feeling and flavor.
What about you? What local brick-and-mortar bookshops hold precious memories … or current interest? Let me know, and I’ll publish the results here!
Jeannette Cézanne
Open Your Heart with Reading
Posted by: Tao Te Ching, reading, reading books, Spiritual issues, Opening the heart — jcezanne
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Little book, BIG ideas — the Tao Te Ching
September 10, 2006 | 10:56 am
I picked up the Tao Te Ching a few weeks back, thinking “this is small. It’ll be a quick read.” Wrong! There are lots of great concepts packed into a tiny book — very tiny in this case since I’m reading the pocket edition of Stephen Mitchell’s version. On the one hand, this particular translation is pretty understandable and straight forward as far as these things go. On the other, though, the use of anachronistic terms such as “electron” is a bit jarring.
I’ve read that Lao-Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching in a very short time, something like a day or two, I believe. There are also the questions of whether Lao-Tzu was one person or many, and the historical accuracy of the name. All that, I suppose, just adds to the fun and mystery of reading such an ancient book.
The Tao is the universal energy that flows through us. The idea is to go through life not fighting it, not pushing against it, but quite literally going with the flow. Gems from the book include: Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
And then there is:
When a country is in harmony with the Tao, the factories make trucks and tractors. When a country goes counter to the Tao, warheads are stockpiled outside the cities. There is no greater illusion than fear, no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy. Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.
(see what I mean by the anachronisms, though? Lao-tzu is thought to be a contemporary of Confucius, 551-479 B.C.E. — not so many trucks then!. I guess it’s time to go pick up something other than the “New English Version” of it!)
The concepts, though, are timeless, no matter how expressed in the particulars. Well worth a read, and it’s certainly more comprehensible than other similar books.
Posted by: Tao Te Ching — Meg
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