Right. Remember you're painting signs, not burning down the customer's property.

Still more maps in books!

Happy early Thanksgiving everyone!! If you're afraid of running out of reading material over the long weekend, check out this publication from the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1969. (Fed docs are a trip sometimes!)

Another book map!

I love books with maps! I blame Tolkien.

I've always loved books with commentary on the fonts used.

Absolutely a perfect book about a perfect bookstore. The whole novel is beautifully written and the story is amazing. Perfect for anyone who loves GOOD books.

Finished 2 of 8 on vacation. Not too bad I don't think.

Really good! I love the Flavia books and really enjoyed the Canadian setting here.

I'm going on a four-day vacation. Am I taking enough books?

April reads (not pictured: Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot)

Incidentally this is also why there‘s no such thing as a genealogical emergency. They‘re dead today and they‘ll still be dead tomorrow.

“Life was not so easily extinguished, and spring trod upon winter‘s heels. It flaunted its colors in the face of death, and laughed under its breath.”

“‘... how much it adds to the pleasure of perusing a favorite book to have some one to compare your observations with.‘” (Eunice Callender)

Well alrighty then.

September reads, including my first book from the 1830s ever.

I never had to read this in school and I finally got around to fixing that deficiency in my education. Excellent, excellent book. Scout is the best; she has such a well-formed idea of how the world is, and it all gets torn to pieces, from her ideas about school to the nature of justice and even to the truth about Boo Radley.

I thought it was just okay. More like Georgette Heyer than Jane Austen: fluffy romance without any serious social commentary. I wasn't going to continue with the series, but after reading the author's note at the end, I want to read everything Kowal ever wrote just because I like what she said about language and anachronisms.

"The past accompanies the present always, even when it is repudiated, and what we reject determines what we affirm." (p. 35)

June reads! I've been in The Historian six months now because it's so good I don't want it to end. Also theology, fantasy, and weather.

"It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home."

Loved this book! The characters, the writing, the atmosphere, everything. Definitely not a happy book, though, but I think that's realistic for the time period.

I love how Willis sets it up so you have certain expectations for what's happening, then goes a completely different direction.

Everybody always raves about Heyer, and I usually find her work to be meh. The fashionable young men pretending to be highwaymen was pretty funny, though. And it was interesting to read a book set in 1776 that only just barely mentions "the war in America."

"The light she carried with her seemed to create, not a rival for the darkness, nor even a contrast to it, but only an accent that clarified its sweep and power."

"Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light."

"For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you've seen that truth--really seen it--you can't look away."

"... when you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation."

"As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claw."

"Looking at the grace of the hall, Nemienne felt a new and unexpected kind of sadness rise into her throat. She didn't truly expect - or even want - to remain in this House, but for the first time she felt that this might be something to regret."