Author Archives: kara

About kara

We know our letters just fine, and we know our numbers to a certain point, but books were always the realm of four-eyed poindexters with bowler hats and cravats. That’s why it pleases us so that America’s proud illiterates are finally stepping up and pushing back against the crushing tide of education that threatens to swallow us all into its gaping maw of checked facts. Champions of the Ignorantiat will not like it here.

There’s a Bookstore in That Train Station.

Posted on March 24, 2010 by kara

The Philadelphia suburb of Mt. Airy, near where I grew up, has no lack of beautiful and unique train stations. But only one has a bookstore. Walk A Crooked Mile Books sells used books out of one the most historically … Continue reading →

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The Singer Sewing Machine of Typewriters

Posted on March 23, 2010 by kara

From the Martin Howard Collection of Early Typewriters: The Underwood Typewriter was the first widely successful, modern typewriter. It pulled together the two main design elements that would be found on all later machines, a four-row keyboard with front strike … Continue reading →

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The Book Reopened in Laredo

Posted on March 22, 2010 by kara

An amazing story of a town pulling together that is straight out of Little House on the Prairie. In response to the closing of the B. Dalton bookstore in Laredo, Texas which has left the city of over a quarter … Continue reading →

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Childhood Obsession: Jane-Emily.

Posted on March 21, 2010 by kara

“There are times when the midsummer sun strikes cold, and when the leaping flames of a hearthfire give no heat. Times when the chill within us comes not from fears we know, but from fears unknown-and forever unknowable”. This is … Continue reading →

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Perdu Dans La Traduction

Posted on March 20, 2010 by kara

My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the … Continue reading →

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EBookophiles: Being Minimal and High Tech Doesn’t Make you any Less Pretentious Than ME.

Posted on March 18, 2010 by kara

The article Shelf Life in last Sunday’s New York Times magazine – insinuating that “traditional” book owners are pretentious phonies for shelving, stacking and throwing their books around their houses – is hypocritical (does it get any more pretentious than … Continue reading →

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Time, Eminent Domain, Marches on and Into Lofts.

Posted on March 14, 2010 by kara

In an essay immortalizing Acres Of Books entitled “I Sing The Bookstore Eclectic” posted on their website, novelist Ray Bradbury describes the book store as “a labyrinth, a tomb, a catacomb, a maze. . . . In its dusty roundabout … Continue reading →

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The Afterword Reading Society

Posted on March 12, 2010 by kara

from the afterward: Here ye! Follow our new thrice-yearly Reading Society as we take on our first book: Daniel O’Thunder by B.C. writer Ian Weir. Our panel – Erin Balser, Craig Davidson, Brad Frenette, Ben Kaplan, Mark Medley and Ron … Continue reading →

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One Day in the Life of Sylvia Plath

Posted on March 12, 2010 by kara

Journal Entry from Cambridge February 19th, 1956 To whom it may concern: Every now and then there comes a time when the neutral and impersonal forces of the world turn and come together in a thunder-crack of judgment. There is … Continue reading →

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Posted on March 10, 2010 by kara

Book Cover Portraits by Painter Richard Baker Credit: Richard Baker (rcdbaker@earthlink.net).

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