Ode to a Haunted Bookshop

Haunted Bookshop Bookmark

My tattered copies of Madeleine L’Engle. Every single book in the Anne of Green Gables series. A well-worn Island of the Blue Dolphins. And the boxed set of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s complete Little House works… now standing faded and creased but tall beside the gorgeous edition produced by The Folio Society… deep red covers which, when lined up in order, show across the spines covered wagons heading West embossed in gold. Both gifts from my parents at different, special points in my life.

I know these beloved stories – and so many more – made their way into my childhood via The Haunted Bookshop. Despite advertising itself as “A General Bookstore,” and featuring the elderly scholar from Carl Spitzweg’s painting The Bookworm on its bookmarks, The Haunted Bookshop had the largest selection of children’s books in my hometown of Tucson.

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March of Woman

Celebrating Accomplished and Substantive Lives More Than a Month at a Time

The author with Pacito, Mama, and Mama Reyes (l. to r.)

The author with Pacito, Mama, and Mama Reyes (l. to r.)

A thought flutters into your mind… and you would swear it is a memory. But you can’t recall having lived it.

Sometimes I summon up a recollection about my paternal grandmother, christened Reyes, called Mama Reyes by me… but I cannot quite bring the scene into focus though. Then I remember it was only a story, an anecdote shared by one of my parents.

Mama Reyes died when I was eleven, so my memories of her consist not of years, but of life lessons.

At the end of the 19th century, it was not uncommon for women to marry early. In fact, as I was told, in the case of Mama Reyes, she was encouraged by her mother (a la Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennett) to marry this “older man with money.” He would provide much-needed security, according to her mother. So, Reyes did. And the man did not.

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Happy Birthday, Elena! The First Female Ph.D., and Other Women Pioneers

Kudos to all the women who read when they didn’t have to.

One such woman was Lady Elena Lucretia Cornaro-Piscopia – born 375 years ago today on 5 June 1646. A true Renaissance woman, Elena Cornaro owns the distinction of being the first woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. (University of Padua, 1678). An expert musician, she mastered the harpsichord, the clavichord, the harp, and the violin. By age 11, she was proficient in Latin, Greek, French, and Spanish, adding Hebrew and Arabic in her teens. Before she was 20, she was studying physics, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and linguistics… then set her sights on a doctorate in theology.

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Nineteen Eighty-Four, So Old It’s New Again

Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.

George Orwell, 1984
1984: The Graphic Novel

George Orwell might have been alluding to the dangers of stealth-editing when he wrote these lines for his 1949 dystopian novel. It’s funny to think that a work of fiction once so futuristic is now “so old” it no longer has copyright protection, but it’s true, as true as two plus two is… four. Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel entered the public domain in the United Kingdom this year. With Orwell’s final book hitting the bestseller lists at various times during the last decade (pretty impressive for a 70-plus-year-old work), I expect we’ll see numerous U.K.-based publishers coming out with their own creative editions. The first-ever graphic novel adaptation is already slated for release in August.

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