Books: an Amazing Endeavor in Alberta, Canada
Last week, I read a post of someone (not one of my FB friends) who wanted to open a book store in the town where she lives. In her town, in northern Alberta, Canada, a town with only 6000 people, there is not a single book store. Can you imagine? I think of the long, cold, dark winters in that area. It would be wonderful for the people to be able to curl up by the fire after work, with a good book. If anywhere, definitely up in Alberta! To me, it sounds like the north pole!
Not only is this lady an entrepreneur, she is also a survivor. Of breast cancer. She was asking on Facebook if there were any authors who would be interested in sending her some autographed books she could sell. 60% would go to the author, 40% to her store. I was so happy that I still have books in the house! Three different editions. I found a box that fit a total of 8 books, autographed them, included business cards for advertising, and told her she could keep all the proceeds for her store. I mailed the box on Monday morning with UPS and was told they would be there in a week. In time for a grand promotion she is planning on April 9.
Donating the books and donating my Audiobooks made me feel very happy. What a coincidence this all happened in the same week!
More book Coincidences
Out of the blue I received a message on my previous Blog post (you can read it there if you like) from a grandson of my father’s WWII flying buddy Jos Vermeulen. If you have read my book, you will have seen his name in several places, because the two men happened to meet in various places over the years. Uncle Jos to me was one of the few familiar people we saw now and then after the war. His grandson in the Netherlands had found a copy of my very first book In the Shadow of the Sun, when he was cleaning up closets. That book, a gift to Jos from my Mom and Dad in 1996, four years after its publishing, was given to him by his mother as a memory to his grandfather Jos. Grandson Darja wrote that at the time he had read the book, but he was going to read it again, in this time of another brutal war.
And then another book showed up: one of the employees in the place where I live, whose second language is English (like mine), ordered a book on Amazon and asked me to autograph it. To my surprise its was a copy of the first edition of Rising from the Shadow of the Sun, and it had been signed by someone as a Thanksgiving gift “to Barbara” in 2012. I signed it yesterday, on Tuesday March 2022, ten years later. It was in mint condition. I told her I have a book from 1928, with the signatures of eight different owners, two of whom added the date they owned it. This book, Camera Obscura by Hildebrand, the 36th print, lived through WWII, and even though the pages are yellowed and the print is very small, it is still in good condition and legible.
Just before we left Prescott for North Carolina, someone gave me, anonymously, a 1929 book of the Book League Monthly, named The Rebel Generation by Jo van Ammers-Küller with a foreword by Hendrik Willem Van Loon. The latter wrote quite a few books about the discovery of island groups in the South Pacific, and he was a favorite of my Dad’s. I have four of his books, retrieved from Dad’s bookcase after he passed away. I never found out who gave me the book in Prescott, but it is fascinating, because it tells about Leiden University in those early years. Leiden University is where I got my English Literature Bachelor’s Degree in the year 1961. It brought back many memories of a wonderful time.
May your days be happy
Until next time
Ronny