Shameless Commerce Division:

Many thanks to the folks who showed for the launch of Hard as a Headstone at Longfellow Books on September 1. Great time, great cake.I’ll be signing books at the South Portland Barnes and Noble on Saturday, September 12 at 1 PM and at The Maine Book & Print Fest at Thompson’s Point the next day at the same time. After that, Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick hosts a reading/discussion of The Last Altruist and Hard as a Headstone at 4 PM on Saturday, September 19. Hope to see you at any or all of them.

They’re Only Books

The geese are flying into the farm pond at Maxwell’s, which means it is fall. Blessedly. If you’ve been following the saga, you will no doubt be fascinated to learn that we are in the middle of moving house. In fact, on the day this post appears, we will be closing on our old home and officially moving into a cozy apartment with a view of the Portland ship channel.

Any move is disruption maximized, but for a household with two ex-English majors, one of them a writer, the critical point has been what to do with the books. I’d already thrown out the bad poems and the old love letters.

Going from fifteen feet of built-in bookcases and ten freestanding ones, all crammed tight, to a manageable number of volumes has been an exercise in self-reflection and not a little ex post facto masochism. (Why did I need three copies of Early Love and Brook Trout?) A serious winnowing process was required—I never thought I was going to get rid of ALL my books.

This didn’t feel like this was a desert island situation. There will be space for books at the new address. But it felt like a great opportunity to revisit why I was giving certain authors and genres shelf space. I finally decided that the only reasonable way I could narrow the collection was to decide which writers I needed most to have around me. To wit:

• Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon—for the creative partnership and the poetry
• Jim Harrison—for the poetry and the hilarious Rabelaisian food writing
• Thomas McGuane—for the fiction
• Barry Lopez—for natural history and deep thought
• John Gierach—for the humor and humanity in fly fishing, and
• Wendell Berry—for the hope and the anger

The whole process was about as easy as picking a splinter out of your eye with a pair of kitchen tongs, but I feel reasonably sure I haven’t lost someone important. On the other hand, bookstores still exist and my credit card still has some space, so I doubt I’ve reached any stasis in book ownership. I am interested to know, though.

Who are your can’t-live-without writers?

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