Ten Inverness Way Blog ... for hikers and readers.
WE WELCOME YOU TO JOIN OUR READER'S BLOG. Please share your favorite books with us and respond to other writers on this blog as well. The first entry is offered by Ten Inverness Way innkeeper Teri Mattson (12-05):
A great article by Damon Darlin entitled “Buying Used Just Could Turn Out to Be the Next New Thing” appears in the December 3rd edition of The New York Times. The article talks about many consumer products that can be bought used at better value than new (i.e. cars, fitness equipment, CD’s and books). Of course, Brett and I have known this about books for a long time.
As avid readers, we’re always on the lookout for great books at great prices. Sometimes we fall prey to internet specials at commercial mainstays, but most of the time our hunts support used bookstores or, at least, the used section of major independent bookstores. We shop library fundraisers and garage sales as well.
Our motivation, of course, is price. We can buy twice as many used books for the same dollar spent on a new volume. Used bookstores offer phenomenal entertainment value. The wonderful aroma (sometimes interrupted by a café mocha walking among the shelves) of books that have hobnobbed from place to place and the touch of their well-worn spines and pages offer great sensual pleasures in addition to the stories they tell. While browsing, we also discover titles no longer in print. Early writings by popular authors that are no longer currently shelved in mainstream stores can be found as well. Of course, our hobby and obsession has a secondary (and maybe even more important) benefit; that being our financial and philosophical support of independent booksellers and literary fundraisers of all types.
We plan to share some of our more memorable reads with you in 2006. Once a month, we’ll tell you what we’re reading and how and why we came to acquire that particular book. The review will be interactive to encourage all of you to read and share your thoughts. Some of the local places we will be shopping for books next year (and encourage you to support as well) include:
Book Passage
51 Tamal Visita Boulevard
Corte Madera, CA
(415.927.0960)
www.bookpassage.com
BookShop/Friends of the Marin County Library
1608 Grant Avenue
Novato, CA
(415.878.0212)
www.marinlibraryfriends.marin.org
Manfred’s Books
60 Fourth Street
Point Reyes Station, CA
(415.663.9646)
Point Reyes Books
11315 State Route No. 1
Point Reyes Station, CA
(415.663.1542)
www.ptreyesbooks.com
Stinson Beach Books
State Route 1
Stinson Beach, CA
(415.868.0700)
December 2005 Recommended Reading:
In keeping with this month’s “used book” theme, try reading Sixpence House, Lost in a Town of Books, by Paul Collins (Bloomsbury, NY 2003).
“Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh Countryside – to move, in fact, to the village of Hay-on-Wye, the “Town of Books” that boasts fifteen hundred inhabitants and forty bookstores. Inviting readers into a sanctuary for book lovers, Sixpence House is a heartfelt and often hilarious meditation on what books mean to us.”
A great article by Damon Darlin entitled “Buying Used Just Could Turn Out to Be the Next New Thing” appears in the December 3rd edition of The New York Times. The article talks about many consumer products that can be bought used at better value than new (i.e. cars, fitness equipment, CD’s and books). Of course, Brett and I have known this about books for a long time.
As avid readers, we’re always on the lookout for great books at great prices. Sometimes we fall prey to internet specials at commercial mainstays, but most of the time our hunts support used bookstores or, at least, the used section of major independent bookstores. We shop library fundraisers and garage sales as well.
Our motivation, of course, is price. We can buy twice as many used books for the same dollar spent on a new volume. Used bookstores offer phenomenal entertainment value. The wonderful aroma (sometimes interrupted by a café mocha walking among the shelves) of books that have hobnobbed from place to place and the touch of their well-worn spines and pages offer great sensual pleasures in addition to the stories they tell. While browsing, we also discover titles no longer in print. Early writings by popular authors that are no longer currently shelved in mainstream stores can be found as well. Of course, our hobby and obsession has a secondary (and maybe even more important) benefit; that being our financial and philosophical support of independent booksellers and literary fundraisers of all types.
We plan to share some of our more memorable reads with you in 2006. Once a month, we’ll tell you what we’re reading and how and why we came to acquire that particular book. The review will be interactive to encourage all of you to read and share your thoughts. Some of the local places we will be shopping for books next year (and encourage you to support as well) include:
Book Passage
51 Tamal Visita Boulevard
Corte Madera, CA
(415.927.0960)
www.bookpassage.com
BookShop/Friends of the Marin County Library
1608 Grant Avenue
Novato, CA
(415.878.0212)
www.marinlibraryfriends.marin.org
Manfred’s Books
60 Fourth Street
Point Reyes Station, CA
(415.663.9646)
Point Reyes Books
11315 State Route No. 1
Point Reyes Station, CA
(415.663.1542)
www.ptreyesbooks.com
Stinson Beach Books
State Route 1
Stinson Beach, CA
(415.868.0700)
December 2005 Recommended Reading:
In keeping with this month’s “used book” theme, try reading Sixpence House, Lost in a Town of Books, by Paul Collins (Bloomsbury, NY 2003).
“Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh Countryside – to move, in fact, to the village of Hay-on-Wye, the “Town of Books” that boasts fifteen hundred inhabitants and forty bookstores. Inviting readers into a sanctuary for book lovers, Sixpence House is a heartfelt and often hilarious meditation on what books mean to us.”
posted by Ten Inverness Way at 11:57 AM
4 Comments:
The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell - by Mark Kurlansky
Like John McPhee, Simon Winchester and a notable few others who can write on scientific matters in ways that make sense to the layperson, Kurlanksky - on the heels of his two books, Salt and Cod - takes us on a journey through the natural history (and human history) of a shellfish and its impact on the evolution of a great city.
As Kurlansky points out, oysters were once everywhere. They grew profusely in river esturaries, where human populations also liked to gather. One of the book's great factoids is when he points out that it is quite possible that fully one half of the earth's native oyster population once resided in the once-pristine, incredibly-rich lower Hudson estuary! There are huge shell middens, basically garbage piles of oyster shells, at the pre-Columbian sites of native villages all along the east coast - and also, we might add, in Miwok village sites along Tomales Bay here in Inverness.
Oysters became a democratic foodstuff, and they were eaten with gusto, though for sheer oyster bingeing, New Yorkers take the half shell. Oysters pumped oxygen into NYC - gastronomically, socially, economically, even archiecturally - as surely as they filtered the water of its harbor.
The ecological downward spiral of the native oyster through human ignorance and population-induced pollution is as melancholy as it was stupid and foreseeable. Kurlansky gets the ache of the bivalve's tale just right.
But you can still come to west Marin and get great oysters, even if they are of the aquaculture type!
Entry from Teri and Brett ... innkeepers at Ten Inverness Way.
This month we share with you a book about life-change and purpose. Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, by John Wood (published by HarperCollins, 2006) is the story of a successful Microsoft executive who discovers greater personal wealth and success by leaving Corporate America to help educate some of the world's poorest children.
When I first picked-up this book, I found the "Leaving Microsoft" part of the title most compelling. These words infer exiting Corporate America which is something I did almost 10 years ago. I thought it would be fun reading about someone else's post-corporate "career". Mine being the ownership and operation of a 5-room bed & breakfast; Mr. Wood's being the creation of Room to Read - one of the nation's largest and most successful charities. Operating in Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Africa, Room to Read has donated more than 1.2 million books, established more than 2,600 libraries and 200 schools, and sent 1,700 girls to school on scholarship.
Mr. Wood was inspired to create Room to Read while on vacation trekking in Nepal. Here, he learned students in a remote Nepalese village had few books. When he offered to run a book drive to provide the school with books, his idea was met with skepticism. John did, however, return to that school with thousands of books bundled on the back of a yak. And, at that moment, he made the decision to walk away from Microsoft and create Room to Read.
If you have ever wondered how one person can truly make a difference, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World is a motivating and inspiring read. Through his creation of Room to Read, John Wood encourages people of all ages and economic conditions to initiate change with whatever contribution (large or small; financial or vocational) is possible. We are pleased to involve Ten Inverness Way B&B, the inn for hikers and readers, in the campaign to educate the world's children by contributing $2.00 for each room night booked to Room to Read (www.roomtoread.org)
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