The Onus of New Year's

Happy New Year, everybody!

It’s ten-thirty in the morning as I write this and Eric and I almost have the tree down and packed away. This is a process that never fails to turn me into a tug-of-war rope. I want it gone – tug to the right – no, wait, I don’t! – tug to the left – until I finally holler “Uncle!” from sheer exhaustion and start yanking off ornaments. There’s something so renewing about reclaiming your space and returning to real life after the frivolity of the holidays and yet there is something wistful too about the passage of another Christmas.

I am both amazed and grateful today for my end of the year sales wrap-up. This week at the antiques mall, particularly yesterday and the day before, was outstanding. In those two days I made up for two weeks of not-so-hot. They bought Civil War stuff, the two volume set of Howe’s Historical Collections, books on collecting, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, a movie souvenir booklet for The Longest Day, art books, magazines, a couple children’s books, and I don’t know what all. I was in there Friday to bring new stuff (the Rubyiat was one of them) and the parking lot looked like a crazy-quilt of cars, so I wasn’t surprised to see the aisles filled with browsers, many of which turned into buyers. If the owner’s smile got any brighter you’d need protective glasses just to check out. I like her very much and this is her first year of ownership, so the sight of her joy doubled my own pleasure. Even online sales improved over the last couple days, so the month ended better than I dared hope.

Last night we stayed home and had a quiet night. I had planned on making our New Year’s dinner then, but didn’t because we decided to bail on the auction planned for today and substitute another one Wednesday, so I just made a pizza and salad. We had two movies from Netflix, but both were duds and we didn’t watch them. Of course after having seen Woody Allen’s fabulous Midnight In Paris earlier in the week a gazillion dollar extravaganza would look like a first grade pageant.. So we read instead– I’m half way through Verghese’s Cutting For Stone at page 347 and still love it – and fell asleep before the witching hour. Eric woke up in the nick of time and woke me up too so we saw the ball drop on Times Square, wished each other Happy New Year and went to bed. Do we know how to party, or what?

Of course New Year’s always arrives dragging in an onus of responsibility for us all Every year I vow to be a perfect person. Seriously, I look at everything about me that needs improvement and decide to tackle it all in one go, which means of course, that when the next New Year rolls around I’m my same imperfect self. So this year I’m honing in on one thing – that balance we talked about in my last post . I hate to say this, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope for success. Nancy and I walked yesterday (five miles) and as the conversation on this topic unfolded I realized that what I STILL want most is to sell books. Both of my daughters think I should be writing, Eric thinks that too, and so does my writers’ group. I even think so myself sometimes.

But for me the call of the books is the Angelus at noon. The bell peals and I am Pavlov’s dog with an ex-Catholic’s conscience, still in love with the ritual of bookselling and still mumbling the old familiar words – “Very nice, clean book in like jacket. Oversized at 9”x12-1/4” with no bumps to boards, no names or writing, no tears or chips, and jacket protected by brand new mylar …”

Never mind that I hate the proliferation of junk sellers, the craziness of book sales, the invisibility of quality books, the escalating cost of buying stock, the greedy paternalism of the listing sites etc. etc. etc..

For better, or for worse, I am a bookseller.