We’re fast approaching Read an Ebook Week, a fine time to pick up the digital device of your choice and download a new book to read.
In case you haven’t already read them or bought them for someone else, you can get both of my Detective Red Shaw novels for 50% off the week of March 5 through Smashwords. Lots of other authors will have books on sale, too.
Please feel free to share this promo with your friends and family and anyone else who would love a chance to find their next favorite book and, as the name suggests, read an ebook!
Well, I picked my favorite John Le Carré to keep from the little collection I showed you a week or so ago.
I’m also keeping *all* of my Hemingway just because, and a few others for reasons that might be obvious. Everyone has a bird book and every writer has Fahrenheit 451, right?
Two are on the shelf because I fully intend to finish them both sometime.
There are actually a few other books I’ll keep around, likely in a box or two unless I can find a free-standing shelf that will fit into my modest new home office space.
I’m still trying to decide if 50 years is long enough to keep high school yearbooks. Maybe too long?
Suppose you could keep just one of these books. Which one would it be?
I know, it’s not a reasonable question. Why can’t I keep more than one? Why can’t I keep all of them?
Because I’m the one who got to ask the question, that’s why. 🙂
It’s a question I asked myself on Sunday while I sorted through some of the few boxes we hadn’t yet unpacked after a move to a smaller house. Rather than put a bunch of books in boxes in our backyard shed for someone to sort through down the road, I’m setting some of my favorites free now. They’ll go to a used book store for a few pennies on the dollar or I’ll donate them to a library or otherwise give them away. I’ll figure that out later.
The first step was to decide what will fit on my little shelves in the new place. A couple of homes ago, we had bookshelves covering an entire wall in my favorite room. We thinned that collection substantially before coming to Colorado, then a bit more in the past ten years. As hard as it can be to part with some old favorites, it’s that time again.
I don’t have every John le Carré spy novel but they’ve long been among my favorites. As someone who grew up during the Cold War, served a couple of years in the U.S. Navy, and enjoyed Russian language courses in college, I could easily imagine myself as part of the intrigue even though it was far from my own lived experience.
Still, as much as I enjoyed reading these books, it’s time to let someone else have them – except for one. I could keep a few more, but I’m reserving that shelf space for another author, whose identity I’ll share sometime soon.
Full disclosure: I’ve already decided what to keep, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change my mind.
One of my favorite places is a pleasant bike ride* from home. It’s a place called Inkberry Books, a little shop in Niwot, Colorado, that supports local authors and other independent writers and artists.
You can’t go there right now, but you and other readers can support this indie book seller by ordering online. Some authors even read excerpts for you to help you choose!
The proprietors were kind enough to invite me to do that, so I decided to give it a try.
The Smith Compound 