A Bee in My Bonnet

Day 204, and today several people came into the bookstore looking for very specific things, for a reason:

1) another woman found Graham Greene's The Quiet American for a local book group, an excellent new paperback edition, the sort I covet, for the light but sturdy feel and lovely graphic.   Happy to covet my neighbor's book, and let her have it.

2) a fellow had read the Chicago Tribune article on 5 great Midwestern novels and came in looking for them, along with anything by Jonathan Franzen.  I found a couple editions ofWinesburg, Ohio for him right away, after thinking I might not because my friend Kim had just found a $1 copy on the half-price cart.  He chose the attractive Modern Library hardback, small, but with the heft of true literature.  He found another book, too, but I can't remember what, so it was probably one of the ones with Sinclair in it, which puts up a mental block that then sets me off on that memory of always getting Main Street and The Jungleconfused because their authors are Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair, complicated by the fact that I am old enough to remember Sinclair gas stations and the big green dinosaur on trips to Ohio to see the grandparents, and once you get lost in dinosaur land, the Midwest is gone forever.

He did not find Franzen's Freedom, announced in the feature article to which the 5 midwesterns was attached, because it is brand new, as of today, nor The Corrections, which we have had several copies of in the past.  (But after he left, I found the sudden arrival of a Franzen hardback on a little pile on the floor.  It wasThe Discomfort Zone, a memoir, and I've put it on the new arrivals shelf by the door for when this fellow comes back.  On his bicycle.  With his helmet.)

And a family came in to cool off before the official start of the hot and humid farmers' market, Tuesdays on the street in front of the store, and walked out with

1) Barbara Kingsolver, both The Poisonwood Bible and The Prodigal Summer, and

2) our fabulous first edition, first printing of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace, and so were treated to the story about Babbitt's Books being Wallace's favorite bookstore.

And tonight, I cannot get the spacing to work right on this post....a bit of a bee in my bonnet.

And that's my own morning glory with a bee down its throat in a photo taken by my son before he went back to college again.