More Tales from the De-Acquisition Zone
March 6, 2011

Right now, on the floor of my living room—as well as on both nightstands, and one corner of the loveseat, are piles of magazines. Seven and a half of them to be accurate: Saveur, Gourmet, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, Martha Stewart Living, Sunset, American Bungalow, and a few miscellaneous publications. A couple of the piles are nearly two feet high.

And it had started so innocently.

“Last call,” the Freecycle post began, “for free magazines.” Unfortunately, my excitement must have affected my vision because I did not notice, before responding, that the poster lived in Los Olivos and not Santa Barbara. So when I was notified that I had been chosen the lucky recipient for about 200 magazines going back as far as fifteen years I was equally dismayed and ecstatic.

Santa Barbara, a lovely town that borders the coastline of central California, is backed by a short mountain range. On the inland side are the historical Stagecoach Inn (restaurant), Lake Cachuma, rolling land suffused with green grasses and, at this time of year, brilliant California poppies, wineries, horse and llama ranches, farms, the Chumash casino, and the towns of Santa Ynez, Solvang (the pretty Dutch tourist community), Buellton (with the famous Pea Soup Anderson restaurant), and tiny, quirky Los Olivos.

The quickest way to get to the inland area is via Hwy 154, a narrow, winding road that is as pretty as it can be dangerous. I avoid it as much as possible because the competing drivers—gawking tourists, impatient locals, trucks hauling large loads—in combination with only occasional passing lanes makes it riskier than I like. But the magazines were tempting, Saturday was a perfect spring day—the recent rains made everything green, or in the case of the blooming California poppies bright orange—and I hadn’t been on that side of the ridge in years. It was a day made for a such a trip.

And so it proved. The forty-five minute drive turned out to be a joy. I inhaled the beauty, filling my senses with the sights, sounds, and scents of the wide open spaces. Even the trouble I had finding the house—Los Olivos is a small town, but a rural one that takes addresses more casually than Santa Barbara does—didn’t affect my mood. I loaded up the magazines, and once in “town” again, about two blocks away, decided to stop for lunch and a quick look around. But ever mindful of BiblioBuffet’s weekend deadline, I headed back sooner than I would have preferred, though with a commitment to return.

The purpose of my journey, of course, had been to pick up the magazines. Once home, I found myself making trip after trip to unload them. They mostly ended up on the floor near the door where, as I noted earlier, they still remain except for those that I took with me to glance through on the sofa and later in bed.

I’m not a fan of Martha Stewart—the person, the alleged lifestyle, or the publication—yet there is something about Martha Stewart Living that holds a weird fascination for me. I think it has to do with the fairy tale aspect, the part that is the fantasy upon which the entire financial empire is predicated. It holds an off-beat attraction for me in the same way Prince Charming did for my childish self. It’s cute, it’s silly, it maybe carries a bit of wishing in it, but really it’s mindless entertainment more than anything.

The number of MSL magazines is impressive, but the largest percentage belongs to Sunset, the home magazine. This one is the reason I responded because my mother loves these. Fifteen years’ worth (or thereabouts) means lots of reading time for her, and that’s especially important as she and Dad find it more difficult to get out of the house without help.

So while I only added to my reading “clutter” through this particular acquisition I will end up de-acquisitioning most of them too. I am merely a stop on their route but that, like my inland travels yesterday, is giving me the chance to enrich my own life.

Upcoming Book Festivals:
Three festivals are coming up next weekend for those lucky people in Arizona,  Florida, and Virginia. Wish I could join you!

Opening on Friday, March 11 and running through Sunday, March 13 in St. Petersburg is the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. The Coliseum is where it will all take place, and it’s going to be big with 123 vendors attending. The admission cost for the weekend is $10 while daily admission runs $6. Friday’s hours are 5:30 to 9:00 pm, Saturday’s hours are 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, and Sunday’s hours are 11:00 am to 4:00 pm. They have a good blog too.

On Saturday, March 12, Roanoke, Virginia, will host the Lex Allen Literary Festival. This is one of the older festivals, having begun in 1960 when the creative writing program at Hollins was started. Writers-in-residence along with guests participate in readings and panels offered free to the public. The day begins at 9:30, includes a catered lunch (that does require payment) and ends with a reception.

And on Saturday and Sunday, March 12-13, the Tucson Festival of Books will bring together 450 authors, more than 200 exhibitors, nearly three dozen entertainment acts, a wide variety of food vendors, special events for teens and for children, and a (sold-out) Author’s Table Dinner.  This sounds like one amazing festival so if you can make do make it.

The Pub House:
Golden Gryphon Press publishes science fiction, fantasy, and horror that was originally founded by Jim Turner, the long-time editor of Arkham House. It’s mission was to publish “handsome, quality books of short story collections by today's master writers and tomorrow's rising stars.” Today, even though Turner is gone  the mission continues They are careful to select excellent stories, and they publish only a few books a year. In 2010, their books included Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Her stories include two that center around the capsule, another that offers an alternate history of the death of J. Edgar Hoover plus many more. Blasphemy by Mike Resnick includes two short novels—one in which a world populated by covens and Satanists are confronted with a special evil, and the other based on an appearance by the “true Messiah” at the end of the twenty-first century—as well as five short stories.

Imaging Books & Reading:
We often talk about organizing the bookcase, but how often can we watch books do it themselves? (Be sure to turn on the sound and stay all the way through to the end.)

Of Interest:
Do you own any of those old Armed Services editions of books? I had one once, and often wondered where it came from. Now I know. At a blog titled The Art of Manliness, a wonderful new post, Literature on the Front Line: The History of Armed Services Edition Books, provides some great history and images of these editions. It began this way: 

The Council on Books in Wartime . . . started Armed Services Editions Inc. to spearhead the effort to get as many pocket-sized paperback books into the hands of America’s fighting forces as possible. ASE Inc. orchestrated a unlikely collaboration between the military, the government, book publishers, printers, composition firms, and paper suppliers.

The books had to be small enough to fit in a cargo pocket and cheap enough to enable millions of copies to be printed.

The answer was to use pulp paper and the rotary presses typically employed in printing digest magazines. Since these presses produced digests that were too long to be easily portable, the books were printed “two-up;” two books would be printed together as one, and then sliced in half to make two separate books. Because of this, the books were longer horizontally than vertically, the opposite of a typical paperback.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren