"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from reading a book?  The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.  The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.  These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.  Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality."

~ Henry D. Thoreau (1817 - 1862) Walden, Life In The Woods, Ticknor & Fields,1854.

"It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.  There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us." ~ H. D. T.
Photo:  Rock Glen Falls, Ausable Gorge, Ontario, L. B. Walker

When Catcher in the Rye was chosen as the main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1951, the president of the club expressed anxiety over the book's somewhat ambiguous title.  He asked the author, J. D. Salinger if he would consider a title change, Salinger simply replied, "Holden Caulfield wouldn't like that."
A first edition, signed, of Catcher in the Rye now sells in the vicinity of fifty-five thousand dollars.
~ The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Editor, Clifton Fadiman, 1985.

Thought For Today ~

Thomas Edison, famous for inventing the electric light bulb, was asked to sign a guest book that had the usual columns for name and address, as well as one for "Interested In."  In this last column Edison entered the word:  " Everything."

THE LITTLE, BROWN BOOK OF Anecdotes, 1985, edited by Clifton Fadiman

Join us today at 1:30 p.m. for a warm-up for Valentine's Day.  Karen Richardson, Curator of Haldimand County Museum, will be at The Neat Little Bookshop.  Round Table discussion on romance!    Do you have any old love letters, tokens of love or maybe a love story?

~ Postcard collection courtesy of John Walker

Familiar with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, "How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways?"
Following, is an excerpt from an early letter ~ Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett.

"I LOVE your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,  and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write, ~ whatever else, no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius, and there a graceful and natural end of the thing.
Since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been turning and turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you of their effect upon me...
"...this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew ~ Oh, how different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat, and prized highly, and put in a book with a proper account at top and bottom, and shut up and put away."

~ THE WORLD'S GREAT LETTERS, Edited by M. L. Schuster, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1940.

Thursday, February 2, 1:30 p.m. Karen Richardson, Curator of the Haldimand County Museum, will be our guest at the Round Table.
Thursday afternoons ~ 1st & 3rd ~ are informal readings/discussions on topics that always entertain and hopefully inform. Being February, we think that romance is a welcome subject. Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and writer, apparently found the winter months long. While on a lecture tour in the United States, he wrote to his wife on March 16, 1950,

"My love, Oh, cat. . .Have you forgotten me? I am the man you used to say you loved. I used to sleep in your arms ~ do you remember? But you never write. You are perhaps mindless of me. I am not of you. I love you. There isn't a moment of any hideous day when I do not say to myself, 'It will be alright. I shall go home. Caitlin loves me. I love Caitlin.'
But perhaps you have forgotten. If you have forgotten, or lost your affection for me, please, my Cat, let me know. I love you."

Please join us. Coffee pot's Always On. . . Thursday, February 2, 1:30 p.m.*From The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time, Edited by David H. Lowenherz, Crown Publishers, New York, 2002
Postcard collection courtesy of John Walker

The Difference Between Literature and Journalism ~

"Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once."

~ Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise, English critic and writer (1903 - 1974)

Source: The Writer and the Reader, Neil Ewart, 1984, Blandford Press.