Hi all of you out there!! Once again why should I even begin to clean off my desk when I'd rather write all of you?!?!?!? There are BOXES EVERYWHERE right now - I can't wait for all of you to see what came today!
Bathtub games, tables, chairs, books, oh so fun!!! I am working tonight until 8:00 so if you're getting this & I haven't gotten to see you in a long time - try to run over! I'll go & get some cookies & lemonade. It would be fun to say hi to some of you that can't ever make it during the day!
This week I read a great little book (I ordered 50 for all of you to claim!) It is called How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen (New York Times Columnist). She states,
"In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself...I felt that I existed much of the time in a different dimension from everyone else I knew. There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books! Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. "Book love," Trollope called it. "t will make your hours pleasant as long as you live." Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort - God, food, family, friends - reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least publicly, although it was really all I though of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in that chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room. I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth."
The book is just so good! Then at the end she makes various lists...
1. 10 Big Thick Wonderful Books that Could Take you a Whole Summer to Read (but aren't beach books)
2. 10 Nonfiction Books That Help Us Understand the World
3. 10 Books that Will Help a Teenager Feel More Human
4. 10 Books I Would Save in a Fire (If I Could Only 10)
5. 10 Books for a Girl Who is Full of Beans (or Ought to Be)
6. 10 Mystery Novels I'd Most Like to Find in a Summer Rental
7. 10 Books Recommended by a Really Good Elementary School Librarian
8. 10 Good Book-Club Selections
9. 10 Modern Novels That Made Me Proud to be a Writer
10. 10 of the Books My Exceptionally Well Read Friend Ben Says He's Taken the Most From
11. 10 Books I Just Love to Read, and Always Will
I'm going to try to collect these lists for you to peruse through when you come in the store! (peruse is a fun word to use!)
Have a fantastic week - your business is more appreciated than I can ever tell you in words, your encouragement & friendship are my treasures! So go take on the day! Susan
Works cited:
Quindlen, Anna. How Reading Changed My Life. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.
