Wednesday, June 2, 2010


"Critical Mess*," a phrase coined by a New York collector, may describe the habitat of most hopeless book lovers. In that particular collector's case, it was thousands of almanacs, old periodicals and booklets.

Herb Martindale, original owner of The Neat Little Bookshop, left us with only one wise piece of advice, "Don't accept everything that everybody brings to you."

We have stopped giving credit for books that are out of fashion and come a dime-a-dozen. However, being book lovers, a good clean book of any genre seems to deserve shelf-space. So we go on quietly making history on Cayuga Street ~ stepping over boxes and piles of books ~ looking more like the original Neat Little Bookshop everyday. Herb would be proud of us.

*A Splendor of Letters, The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World, Nicholas A. Basbanes.Perennial/HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

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