1. The Skull Mantra (1999)
2. Water Touching Stone (2001)
3. Bone Mountain (2002)
4. Beautiful Ghosts (2004)
5. Prayer of the Dragon (2007)
6. The Lord of Death (2009) [Wikipedia]

Just goes to prove “there’s no accountin’ far taste” (to be spoken in the Ozark accent into which I was born; down there, “for” rhymes with “far”).
 
I love the series and highly recommend it. It fits, squarely, within the niche defined in Mystery Series Set in Foreign Lands with one additional quirk: the protagonist is Han Chinese, a disgraced inspector from Beijing who, before he was sent to a labor camp in Tibet, was a highly placed political person in the government.
 
Lest one become too condescending toward China’s Tibetan policy, I think it’s good to remember that…

• our own country’s conquering, killing, subjugation, disenfranchisement, and internment in reservations of the native people of this land has been quite a bit less than humane–nor is there any sign that we intend to make any reparations or amends to them;
• ditto our treatment of the natives of Africa who were enslaved on American soil;
• theocracies of any sort–even Buddhist–are a disaster (even governments too much in the sway of any one religion, such as in Sri Lanka, can become dangerous);
• the media, including fiction but most certainly “news,” is never free from bias, so unless one is actually in the location in question, there is no way to know the real story and most historical theory would say that even then, one cannot know the whole, unbiased story, because one can only view circumstances from a single point in space and time and through a single personal bias;
• and, if one goes back into history to justify a point of view, it is always possible to go back even farther in time and support an opposing point of view–it is best to confront reality solely on the basis of the current situation.

That said…the Tibetan context of Pattison’s novels makes the heart break.
 
Inspector Shan’s heart broke too and he became acculturated to the Tibetan Buddhist sensibility through his contact with lamas in prison camp and, after his release, to the wider Tibetan society.
 
It’s worth taking a look at the Wikipedia article on acculturation. The examples given in the article are of native peoples being exposed to outside culture and gradually adopting and integrating their customs into their own. However, acculturation works both ways.
 
It happened when the Romans brought Greek slaves to teach their young; Greek thought and ideals infiltrated Roman culture. It happened when African slaves were brought to America; “southern cooking” is really African-American cooking and jazz and rock arise from African-American music. It happens time after time throughout history, the “conquering” force always seems to, eventually, absorb and “become” the very thing it conquers.
 
Personified by Inspector Shan, I think that is what Pattison’s books hold out as the eventual solution to the Tibetan future, that the acculturation will eventually go both ways. Perhaps it’s worth remembering that the Qing dynasty became Buddhist with a Tibetan lama as advisor to the Emperor. Might not that be the model for a possible future?

amusements and pastimes

There’s an interesting getaway a leisurely five hour drive from Tampa: Jeckll Island, Georgia (www.jekyllisland.com).

The History of Jeckll Island page of the above website gives an encapsulated account of its history:

“In 1886, Jekyll Island was purchased to become an exclusive winter retreat for America’s most elite families, known as the Jekyll Island Club. For more than half a century, the nation’s leading families, including the Rockefellers, Morgans, Pulitzers, and Goulds, came to Jekyll Island ‘to secure an escape.’”

Jeckll Island Hotel Club exteriors

As with many of the pleasures one discovers in life, a trip to Jeckll Island would never have been something I would have sought out on my own initiative; rather, I went there because of an external event–the wedding of my son!

My son and his fiancé–now his wife–decided to have a small, “destination wedding.”

I’d never heard that term before. But, now that I’ve learned about it, I must say I’m taken with the idea. The couple and those invited to the wedding go to the destination and rent rooms through the night of the wedding. The wedding takes place on the grounds of the destination and included in the price of the event are things like the officiant, the musician, the photographer, the wedding dinner, etc. Then, the day following the wedding, the guests return home and the couple stays at the destination for their honeymoon.

Such a lovely idea. And in this case, this particular destination was such a lovely place, a place I would never have come to otherwise.

The guests and bride and groom stayed at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel (www.jekyllclub.com)–either the main building or one of the “cottages,” which are the former residences of people who used to winter there and who originally bought the island, people such as the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Pulitzers. Humble folk. Just about as humble as their three storey “cottages.”

Jeckll Island Hotel interiors

All the pictures in this post are of the Jekyll Island Club Hotel buildings and grounds.

There are other, quite good, less expensive places to stay on the island, but the Jekyll Island Club Hotel was less expensive than I thought it would be. Actually, it was less than some hotels on St. Pete Beach. So, if you’re only going for a couple nights, as I was, it doesn’t break the bank. For a very nice two days within a short day’s drive from Tampa, I really do recommend Jeckll Island, Georgia, and the other neighboring Golden Isles of Georgia (St. Simons Island, Brunswick, and Sea Island–see Brunswick and the Golden Isles of Georgia).

Jeckll Island Hotel dock

One last suggestion: when you visit the Jeckll Island Club Hotel, take time to visit its bookstore. Allow at least an hour to browse its many rooms, each dedicated to a specific theme related to the Georgia islands. My favorite (you can tell by checking my credit card statement for that visit) was the cookbook room, with many cookbooks relating to the Atlantic barrier islands cooking history.

Jeckll Island bookstore

There are two cookbooks in particular I’d like to mention. One is Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way: Smokin’ Joe Butter Beans, Ol’ ‘Fuskie Fried Crab Rice, Sticky-Bush Blackberry Dumpling, and Other Sea Island Favorites. The other is Cornbread Nation 5: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

Cornbread Nation is the most recent in a series of Best of Southern Food Writing volumes. That title is obviously carefully chosen. It’s the quality of the writing, not just the recipes, that is the appeal of the series.

trees and moss

Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way is, of course, about the cooking of the Gullah region (the coast of South Carolina and Georgia), home to the Gullah who…

” are known for preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African-American community in the United States. They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure. The Gullah language is related to Jamaican Creole, Barbadian Dialect, and the Krio language of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions, all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures.” [ref]

To say more about the Gullah would require another whole post. There is also an incredibly rich and beautiful Gullah musical tradition that would require yet another whole post! So, I’ll leave you with these five links that interested me in a Google search of Gullah.

• Gullah Language & Culture
• The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection
• Hilton Head Island Gullah Celebration
• Gullah Festival
• Gullah Gourmet

Also…all best wishes to my son and daughter-in-law. May you have many, many happy years together!

[Disclaimer: if you buy something, like the books above, through my Amazon.com links, I receive a teeny-weenie commission from Amazon. It really is miniscule. It doesn't increase the price of the item in any way. So, if you'd be willing to buy something through my Amazon links, I might be able to afford a second cup of coffee some morning! I make this disclaimer because we are now required to by law, so please consider things thoroughly disclaimed.]

If you enjoy travel to foreign lands and if you enjoy mystery suspense series with a strong, memorable protagonist, then we share the love of a special niche in escapist fiction.

I’m sure there are more such series, but there are four authors’ series that I know of.

James Church‘s novels, featuring an Inspector O of Pyongyang, North Korea. It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely, inhospitable setting for a story and likable protagonist, but Church makes it work, fabulously. I guarantee you’ll be hooked once you start reading these:

• A corpse in the Koryo (2006)
• Hidden moon : an Inspector O novel (2007)
• Bamboo and blood (2008)

Perhaps my favorite among the authors I know in this niche is John Burdett with his Bangkok series, featuring a continuing cast of quite varied characters, including the central one, Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. What is so intriguing about this series is how completely the characters’ world view is Thai–not at all Western. I really do love this series.

• Bangkok 8: A Novel (2003)
• Bangkok Tattoo (2006)
• Bangkok Haunts (2007)
• The Godfather of Kathmandu (2010)

An earlier novel of his, not part of the series, is The Last Six Million Seconds (1997), that takes place during the handover of Hong Kong from the British to the People’s Republic of China. Good book!

Of course, the widely known Millennium Trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson, belongs in this niche as well. These may be the most famous novels of this type.

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005)
• The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006)
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2007)

To my knowledge, there’s no one who wrote mystery series set in foreign lands earlier, than the granddaddy of them all, Martin Cruz Smith and his Inspector Arkady Renko mysteries set in Russia:

• Gorky Park (1981)
• Polar Star (1989)
• Red Square (1992)
• Havana Bay (1999)
• Wolves Eat Dogs (2004)
• Stalin’s Ghost (2007)
• Three Stations (2010)

I would love to see Church and Burdett become as widely known as Larsson and Smith; they deserve to be.

I would also love to know of other mystery series set abroad so I can indulge myself in more hours of armchair travel and sleuthing.

There are, of course, many mystery series with European locales…England, France. And, I vaguely remember reading a series of mysteries set in Italy featuring a rather dour, Italian police detective, but I can’t recall the author’s name or any of the titles in the series. But, I was thinking, in this post, of more exotic locations.

If you know of any other (exotic locale) foreign mystery series, please comment, below. (No, Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau does not count!)

I’m surprised there’s not a series set in India…or China…or…

• Art Around the Clock,
• Best Books & Rich Treasures,
• A Book Legacy,
• Books To The Ceiling,
• Camelot Books,
• Arthur H. Minters Bookseller,
• Miracle Estate Sales,
• Vivian Moore Bookseller,
• Old Tampa Book Company,
• Griffin Bookbinding, and Griffon’s Medieval Manuscripts, Inc., both of which were part of the Inkwatu post, Wilson’s Bookworld, and of course
• Lighthouse Books, covered in Inkwatu’s Lighthouse Books. I’m not sure of Mr. Michael Slicker’s responsibilities with the St. Pete Antiquarian Book Fair, but I suspect he’s very active in the organization.

Check out the entire list of participating booksellers at the webpage given above (floridabooksellers.com/bookfair.html) to find small, independent bookstores near you. Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble are fine and have their purpose, but these people need our support for it is they who find, restore, and preserve the gems that we can buy from them. As you look through the list of dealers, you’ll notice the abbreviation, ABAA. That stands for Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (www.abaa.org).

12th to 16th Century Illuminated Manuscripts, 19th & 20th Century English & American Literature, African American, African Diaspora History, Agriculture, American Historical, American Literature, American Revolution, Americana, Americana (South), Lesbian/Gay, Anthropology, Antiquarian Theology, Antique and collectible maps and atlases, Antiques, Appraisals, Architecture and photography, Art and Print Reference, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Art of the South, Art, Autographed books, Autographed Children’s Books, Autographs, Automotive, Aviation, Baseball, Bierce, Big Little Books, Bindings, Biography, Boy & Girl Scouts, Caldecott & Newbery Award Winners, Calligraphy, Canadiana, Cartographic Reference, Catalogues, Chess, Children’s Literature, Children’s Books, Children’s Series, Children’s Illustrated, Church History, Civil War, Civil War & Presidential Autographs & Documents, Classic Fiction, Collectible Paperbacks, Colonial Americas, Cook Books, Counter Culture, Designer Binding, Detective Fiction, Disney and Modern Firsts, Documents & Prints, Early Printed Books, Economics, Engineering, English & American Literature, Ephemera, Exploration & Voyages, Family Bibles Restored, Fantasy and Mysteries, Fine & Leather Bindings, Fine Art Books, Fine Hand Bookbinding, Fine Prints, Firearms, First Editions, Fishing, Florida fiction, Florida History, Florida Non-Fiction, Floridiana, Genealogy, Golf, Graphics, H. L. Mencken, Hemingway, History, Horror, Horse & Dog Sporting, Horticulture, Hunting, Illustrated & Color Plate Books, Judacia, Law, Leather Sets, Literary First Editions, Literature (Modern), Literature in Translation, Literature of the South, Little House Books, Manuscripts, Maps, Maritime History, Mathematics, Medicine, Methodism, Michael Hague, Military History, Miniature Books, Modern Illustrated, Modern Original, Mystery, Native American, Natural History, Natural Science, Nautical, New England History, Out of Print Scholarly, Outlaw, Periodicals on Art, Philosophy, Photographica, Photography, Photo-plays, Poetry, Polar, Pop Ups, Postcards, Press Books, Psychology & Medical, Railroads, Rare & Unusual, Religion, Science Fiction, Science, Sets, Signed & Inscribed Books, Slipcases, Small Press, Southern, Southern Americana, Southern Authors, Southern Fiction, Southern History, Southern Literature, Southern Regional, Sports, Steinbeck, Suspense, Tasha Tudor, Technical, Tennesseana, Tennis, Reformation, Theology, Tolkien, Transportation, Travel and Exploration, Typography, U.S. Coastal History, Visionary, Voyages, Western Americana, Whaling, Women Writers, Yachting, and Zane Grey.

Amazing, isn’t it. My own loves are in there: children’s series (stuff like the Wizard of Oz, The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Doctor Dolittle, and World War II Flying Ace novels) and ephemera. Ephemera, literally, means “things that transient,” in this context, posters, illustrations, postcards, tickets, sheet music…things that are very much a product of their time. The Inkwatu post, Vintage Sheet Music Covers, has images of some in my collection and Music From Another Era has some from my sister’s collection (that link opens to her own website). The Inkwatu post, Vintage Florida Postcards presents part of the postcard collection of a good friend, Fran Sims.

If you have the chance and this kind of thing interests you, take in the last day of the Book Fair on the 14th. If you have to miss it this year, there’ll be another next year about this time of the year. And…be sure and support your local, independent bookseller throughout the year!

St. Petersburg is divided by a major street, Central Avenue, that runs East to West from the bay side all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. “Avenues” in St. Pete run East and West. “Streets,” North and South. Any street or avenue north of Central Avenue is North; any street or avenue south of Central Avenue is South. Very logical. One should never get lost. Unless, of course, you realize that the other city with streets and avenues, New York City, has a plan that is exactly the reverse of St. Pete’s. That can cause some confusion for visitors.

Just north of Central Avenue, in downtown St. Pete, is a large lake that was the first water supply for the city. Here’s a great description of the area by Bob Vila, the home improvement expert in his article on the North Downtown district, also known as the Mirror Lake neighborhood:

“North Downtown Neighborhood is located in central St. Petersburg, just north of downtown and west of Tampa Bay. It is home to Mirror Lake, the city’s first source of drinking water and continued source of recreation. The Carnegie Library or Mirror Lake Branch Library was built in 1914 and sits at the east end of the lake in Mirror Lake Park. The nationally recognized Coliseum Ballroom is also located in North Downtown, as are the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club, the National Shuffleboard Hall of Fame, the Chess Club, and Lawn Bowling Club. The neighborhood offers a mix of residential and commercial buildings built between 1900 and the 1940s, architectural styles that range from Florida Cracker style to Spanish stucco and Mediterranean. Residents of North Downtown have an easy walk to galleries, Tropicana Field, restaurants, and City Hall.”

Eventually, I’ll cover all the historic buildings he mentions. Inkwatu has already had a couple articles on programs in the Shuffleboard Club (St. Pete Shuffle India Night and The St. Pete Shuffle).

Today’s post is about the Mirror Lake Public Library (280 5th St. N., St. Petersburg, FL 33701; 727-893-7268), one of the set of historic buildings that are around the edge of Mirror Lake. According to this Wikipedia article: “The St. Petersburg Public Library (also known as the Mirror Lake Library or Carnegie Library) is a Carnegie library built in 1915 in Beaux-Arts style. It is located in St. Petersburg, Florida (280 Fifth Street North). On June 13, 1986, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.” Another Wikipedia article explains: “Carnegie libraries are libraries which were built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. More than 2,500 Carnegie libraries were built, including some belonging to public and university library systems. Carnegie earned the nickname Patron Saint of Libraries.” Again Wikipedia: “Beaux-Arts architecture denotes the academic neoclassical architectural style that was taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris…The Beaux-Arts style heavily influenced US architecture in the period 1880–1920.”

The State of Florida website, MyFlorida, has an extensive article on Carnegie and libraries in Florida at Florida’s Carnegie Libraries — A Lasting Legacy. One of the interesting sites I stumbled across when researching for this post is this one by R. George & Associates, who apparently provided some of the furniture and interior design for the restoration of the Mirror Lake Library.

The venerable old Mirror Lake Library with its quiet, upstairs reading room is a hushed experience. Sure, it has its Internet computer stations and DVDs and CDs, so it’s a fully modern library; but, the interior design and architectural style make everyone who visits this library feel, and behave, as if they really were in a “real,” old-fashioned library. It’s a joy to visit.

Note: starting with today’s post, Inkwatu is moving to a once a week posting schedule–Saturday mornings.

If you’re reading this blog, the chances are pretty good that you’re reading lots of other blogs, and if you’re doing that, the chances are even better that you’re a Reader (upper case “R” in case you missed it) and you read real books, too, and reading books has been an important part of your life since childhood. I’m a reader, too. Thousands of hours lying on the floor reading in all kinds of bad light, far too closely, and at an extremely bad angle, left me myopic and overweight, but it also left me with a passion for reading and books and the world that can be created between our ears that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

The main character of John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway “Bookman” novels is a former cop turned bookseller/appraiser who, in one of the novels, classifies folks—such as you and I—who have book collections. Cliff Janeway says one of the types are those who collect books just to posses them as a compulsion without regard to their individual significance (almost any books on the shelf would do as long as there were many of them).

If you’ve never read any of the “Bookman” series, you’ve a treat awaiting you. These are mystery novels a cut above most. Publishers Weekly calls them “compulsively readable.” That’s the truth. I suggest buying them all at the same time, because you’ll want to pick up the next one in the series to read, immediately upon finishing the first one.

You and I are definitely not in Cliff Janeway’s indiscriminate collector category. I’m sure you’re like me in which each book in your or my collection has a significance of its own and has not only been read once, but probably many times. That significance can vary, of course. Sometimes it’s the information in the book. Sometimes it’s its commercial value (such as a rare, signed first edition). Sometimes its power to move us (fiction or non-fiction that speaks to our heart). And sometimes it’s nostalgia.

I don’t have many nostalgia books, but I have a few. The story of my discovering the pleasure of owning a book for nostalgia’s sake began while recently living part of a year in New Orleans. Around the corner from the place in the French Quarter where I was staying was a tiny bookshop on a back street, Kaboom Books. As bookworms will do, I wandered around looking at titles, just enjoying myself, with no purpose other than simple exploration.

I came upon two old editions of Horatio Alger novels. Not being particularly valuable editions, they were cheap enough I felt I could indulge myself and buy some books that had shaped my father’s generation. I had heard about them but never read them, so my motivation was probably more curiosity than nostalgia.

Now, old books—and I mean really old books—have been a part of our family’s life for generations since my father, sister, both paternal and maternal grandfathers, and possibly even a few more beyond that were Methodist ministers who all had extensive libraries in their homes which included frighteningly old Bibles and, my favorites, ancient hymnals. So, old books are a comfort “food” for me. But buying the Alger novels kind of sparked a new slant on the meaning for me of old books. I began to see, now that I’m an old “book” myself, how my own life arch intersected old books I discovered.

The next solid step on this path of personal archeology came at a charity silent auction where I bid on two books I remember reading in grade school. I actually remember sitting in the little southern Illinois town’s public library reading them. I remember even the quality of the light from the windows above me while reading, the dust motes in the air, the tactile quality of the wooden chair, the pre-air conditioning air. I was particularly fond of the Indian book and would fantasize for hours about being in the woods with my bow and arrow and loin-cloth. Fortunately, I won the bid at the auction and have been able to read the books again.

(An aside: I think the folks who write fiction and non-fiction for kids deserve a lot more thanks and appreciation than they probably get. They’re the ones who shape generations of readers. Without any Doctor Dolittle, Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, or Nancy Drew, chances are there wouldn’t even be anyone primed to read War and Peace.)

Which brings us to the book pictured at the top of this post: Dave Dawson with the Air Corps from the Dave Dawson War Adventure Series. Now, one of the facts of life about being in the family of a rural minister was that you were also poor. You lived in a house provided by the church, called a parsonage, and it wasn’t considered seemly (or necessary) to give the preacher much of a salary. Sometimes, they just gave you leftover foodstuff. Or whatever else it was they wanted to get rid of. So it was that I wound up owning all dozen or so of the Dave Dawson books that were published during WWII. Although they were published a couple years before I was born and I was reading them 10 years after the war, I loved these books. I think it’s because of them that, today, I enjoy suspense and adventure fiction so much.

This past year, the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair was at the Coliseum here in St. Pete. (The next one is March 13, 2009, and you can be sure I’ll be there, camera in hand.) As I wandered up and down the aisles of the 2008 book fair, I happened upon the stall of Lighthouse Books, ABAA – owned by Michael & Cathie Slicker (1735 First Avenue North, St. Petersburg, FL 33713; 727-822-3278; LighthouseBooksABAA@verizon.net). About twenty years ago, I had been in their tiny St. Pete store but had not been back since. So, my curiosity was aroused. I stepped into their book fair stall and discovered one of the reading passions of my youth: Dave Dawson (pictured at top of article). I bought it. Beside the joy of owning it, I found it also prompted me to re-explore Lighthouse Books itself.

I’ve always measured the culture of a town in the ratio of taxidermy
shops to independent bookstores. In this regard, St. Petersburg fairs pretty well. I’ve covered two other St. Pete bookstores that I haunt, Wilson’s Bookworld and Haslam’s Book Store. Lighthouse Books is right up there with them in my personal pantheon of local independent bookstores.

Their copy says they have ” Floridiana, Americana, Caribbean/Latin American History, Southern Literature, Maps, and General Antiquarian books.” That, for sure, and much more. Every wall in this tiny, one or two bedroom cottage where they have been located since 1984 (before that it was farther downtown) has a floor to ceiling bookcase. In front of each bookcase there are books stacked several bookshelves high. You literally have to turn sideways to wiggle through the warrens of Lighthouse Books. Nothing’s haphazard. Everything is quite organized, but there are more books in one space than you might think possible.

There was half of one whole wall devoted to the Civil Way that my Mississippi Cuzn Don would have loved. Another cranny was dedicated to genealogical books among which I noted several for research into the, I’m sure, frustratingly tangled roots of African-American ancestry. And…an entire room of antiquarian children’s literature!

They were all there. Dave Dawson. I treated myself to a $3 one and a $6 one. I’m hooked, aren’t I.

Lighthouse Books is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10.00 am – 5.00 pm.

Have you ever wanted to run away from home? Join the circus? Run a hot dog stand (we’ve talked about this before)? Sail away to Tahiti (you know: Bernstein’s “Trouble in Tahiti,” going native like Gauguin, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Bali Hai“)? Of course; me too. Usually, my escapades are limited to day dreaming over a travel book. Just as one can gain a surprising amount of pleasure from drooling over the pages of a beautiful cookbook—the huge ones like you find on discount near the entrance of Borders—one can also vicariously experience the remote location of one’s desires in a good travel book.

As a kid, I remember reading Thor Heyerdahl‘s Kon Tiki: Across The Pacific By Raft (1950) and Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island (1958). At the same age, I also read multiple books about snorkeling. One in particular stuck in my mind. It was a non-fiction account of a family, with children my own age, who moved to an island in the Caribbean. It was filled with beautiful underwater photos of their snorkeling adventures.

I never made it to Easter Island. I never became a snorkeler. I never made it to the Caribbean…yet. (Although I have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express!) But, I know my motivation to visit the places I did manage to visit was fueled by those early travel books. Such books still have a place in my life and I hope they do in yours too.

I was pleased to have recently made the acquaintance of an honest-to-goodness travel writer, David Stanley. Stanley, who is described as “the dean of travel writers,” writes primarily for Moon Handbooks, although he has also authored books for Lonely Planet. Just on the South Pacific region alone, he has three titles with Moon Handbooks: Moon South Pacific (Amazon link), Moon Fiji (Amazon link), and the title I want to discuss here, Moon Tahiti (Amazon link). Here are just a few of the features that attract me to this book:

• maps of entire islands and villages that are clearer than usual;
• wide ranging discussion of the cultural aspects of French Polynesia;
• constructed the way one actually uses a guidebook;
• ordered like the actual travel experience (planning, arrival, etc.);
• visually intelligible layout;
• budget options for every situation;
• an examination of each island group and island;
• historical perspectives;
• vital services and health references;
• practical technical charts;
• additional reading broken down into important categories;
• discussion of language skills;
• information on the arts;
• a discography of folk music of the area;
• good Internet links for further exploration;
• some user content (feedback provided by past readers);
• based only on un-sponsored, anonymous visits.

Those are things that are meaningful to me, the kind of things that catch my eye and make me choose one guidebook over another. But, that list, long as it is, falls short of describing all the features he provides. There is so much to recommend in this book and, I assume, other Moon Handbooks by Stanley. A lot of thought and many years of first-hand experience went into the creation and design of this book. I wish I had had as useful a book for other places I’ve visited. Be sure to visit David Stanley’s South Pacific website (http://www.southpacific.org/) for more information on that region and on other Moon Handbook titles.

Next post, we’ll continue this theme of escaping from the cares of our world by visiting the N. E. Taylor Boatworks in Cortez, Florida. There, they refurbish very large boats including ocean going sailboats capable of crossing the Pacific to Tahiti. The opening picture in today’s post is of just such a boat I photographed at the Taylor Boatworks. The flowers pictured above are plumeria (or frangipani). These, I shot at my sister’s home in Hawaii, but they are equally common in all the South Pacific islands, including Tahiti, as well as here in Florida. The following picture I took from the very southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii, looking directly toward Tahiti and our shared, pacific dreams.

TS Fay is past and, as it turned out, Tampabay survived without being touched at all. Others weren’t so fortunate: there was much flooding on the east coast and at least 6 died as of the writing of this post. There really is no such thing as an insignificant tropical storm. Many thanks to Lucy for her two guest posts (Part 1 and Part 2) while I prepared for a storm that, fortunately, never hit here. I’m back to take up the pen again for Inkwatu. Here is today’s post…

The personality of a place

The two cities—St. Petersburg and Tampa–facing each other across Tampa Bay have always had very different personalities. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a city has a personality. Exactly “how” it happens, I haven’t a clue. I’m not even sure what branch of study concerns itself with such things…sociology maybe? Geography? Regardless, it’s true that cities have their own unique character and like any person, have their own character traits. Part of St. Petersburg’s is its locally owned, independent bookstores.

In an earlier post, I profiled Haslam’s, that is definitely a great place and, justifiably, bills itself as “Florida’s Largest New & Used Bookstore” But bigger isn’t better, it’s just different. There are other independent bookstores in St. Pete that, just like cities and people, have their own character. One, that has been a favorite of mine for many, many years, is Lighthouse Books (1735 First Avenue North, St. Petersburg, FL 33713; 727-822-3278; Florida & Caribbean History, Literature of the South, Rare & Unusual).

One almost creeps into Lighthouse Books like a spelunker rather than walking upright, since the tiny house is so crammed with books. It resembles a cave more than anything else with bookshelves cantilevered above your head. Lighthouse’s tag line (“Rare & Unusual) is well earned. At their stall at last year’s Florida Antiquarian Booksellers Association Annual Book Fair, I was able to find several books I enjoyed as a child: old pot-boiler flying ace novels published during WWII that probably nurtured my current love of action fiction. The Annual Book Fair, which is held in the St. Pete Coliseum, is NOT to be missed. It, and other events held at the Coliseum, such as Floridiana retro exhibits, are inexpensive and fun, the kind of events that’ll entertain you for a full day.

The Florida Antiquarian Booksellers Association Member List is a terrific resource for finding independent bookstores throughout Florida; this list of “Indie” Store Links gives listings from all 50 states. More info on local independent book dealers can be found at Tampa Book Buzz.

More than one kind of “used book”

Incunabula

I’ll be reporting more fully on Lighthouse Books and other St. Pete independent bookstores in later posts. Today, I want to showcase another St. Pete independent bookstore that is a St. Pete institution: Wilson’s Bookworld (2394 9th St N, St Petersburg, FL 33704; 727-896-3700‎).

If you take a peek at the above Florida Booksellers listing (Wilson’s doesn’t have their own home on the web), you’ll notice their tag line is “Used & Rare, General, Incunabula.” Now…what the heck is incunabula?! I have a pretty good vocabulary, but I had to look that one up. I’m glad I did because I, mistakenly, thought I had remembered that it had something to do with witches and warlocks!

I was confusing incunabula, with “Incubus” (a demon that has sex with people in their sleep).

Wikipedia’s first few words about “incunabula” (what Wilson’s sells—no evil spirits at Wilson’s, I guarantee!) is very concise and understandable: “An incunabulum is a book, single sheet, or image that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe. These are very rare and valuable items.”

Their tag line definitely gives an accurate picture once you know what incunabula means…just imagine a bookstore with used books that range from comic books and romance novels to manuscripts from the 16th century! That’s Wilson’s.

The ABE Books page for Wilson’s gives a link to Griffon’s Medieval Manuscripts, “Affordable Renaissance Art for the Discriminating Individual.” Dr. Griffon and Jeff Morris have been working together for the past decade. Morris is Director of Incunabula & Early Printing for Griffon’s. Two years he was also put in charge of Indentures (hand written medieval legal documents mostly dealing with land). Mondays & Tuesdays he can be found at his desk at Griffon’s pouring over old tomes. Within the incunabula community he’s been Internationally published (The Ship of Fools To 1500 ISBN #1-57898-523-4) and was the closing speaker for the International Incunabula Symposium held at the special collections library at USF last year. Click on the following Amazon graphic link to purchase a copy of The Ship Of Fools To 1500.

Comic Books…er, I mean graphic novels

I wasn’t exaggerating about Wilson’s carrying comic books. Haslam’s has them too, all finely packaged in plastic, but the Wilson’s collection, while it includes pricier items, also carries opportunities for the collector of more modest means. One reviewer on The Master List has the following review about Wilson’s comic book collection: “They sell new comics and have a subscription service but what is wonderful about Wilson’s is that most of the back issues in their back issue bins are $1.00! They also have a huge pile of quarter books you can sort through.”

Jack Kerouac and St. Pete

When researching for a post oddball things turn up. Usually, those tidbits are just things that I fritter away time following down the rabbit warrens of the Internet! Sometimes, though, those items relate in some oblique way. So it was that I discovered, in my research for this post (yes…bloggers actually research, they don’t just improvise off the top of their heads), that St. Pete was the final residence of Jack Kerouac! (This was in the context of looking up Florida authors—there are so many Florida authors, that topic deserves a blog all of its own!)

Kerouac’s home is still here–seems like someplace worth looking up some afternoon, just to say you did. Do check out Google Books, on page 37 of Pop Culture Florida by James P. Goss (Pineapple Press Inc, 2000; ISBN 1561641995, 9781561641994; 162 pages)—available for purchase at the Amazon graphic link above or here: Pop Culture Florida.

It has an entire, very intriguing chapter on Jack Kerouac’s final days here, entitled “Martyred in St. Petersburg.” Ornery to the end, he was a real presence in St. Pete’s literary/artistic milieu and, considering a number of people I know, today, in that milieu I would say he maybe cast the mold for generations to come.

Goss’ book is described on the cover as “A behind-the-scenes look at some of the people and events that have played a part in the pop history of the Sunshine State from 1945 to the present; A factual, fun, sometimes funny overview of high-living movers and shakers, lowly scam artists and criminals, and just plain colorful folks; Discover little-known facts about some of Florida’s most famous residents, visitors, and events.”

I confess to more than a bit of covetousness about this very nice little book. I hope to do the same thing some day with Inkwatu posts, edited into a St. Pete book. Goss’ book is definitely in the tradition to which I aspire. (I figure mine wouldn’t be grand enough to be a “coffee table book,” but it might qualify as a “dashboard book,” what locals leave in their cars to help them find a good place to eat.)

Jeff Morris, owner, Wilson’s Bookworld

Another tidbit to surface in my research for this post came about in stages. The owner is listed as Jeff Morris. Searching for that name, I found this Creative Loafing article than mentions a Jeff Morris who is both a photographer and owner of Wilson’s Bookworld. So, I went a-hunting for St. Pete photographers named Jeff Morris and came up with a beautiful website called Graven Images Photography. Not wanting to jump to conclusions, I queried Mr. Morris of Graven Images if he is the same Jeff Morris who owns Wilson’s Bookworld.

I was delighted to discover he is. He gave me a bit of history that’s not available online: his mom founded Wilson’s back in 71. He worked there part time since its inception and full time when he got out of High School in 75. He bought her out in 88 and has had Graven Images since 2000.

I urge you to explore his photography site. He’s a real photographer (not just a point-and-shoot guy like me). All the photos are beautiful. Some have a sense of humor (this one for instance) and some are mysterious (like this one). It’s tough to limit myself to just a couple examples—there are too many good ones.

A cozy store in a cozy city

Before leaving this post on Wilson’s just a couple observations about the store itself. It is COMFORTABLE! It has the real easy-chair environment that Borders and B&N imitate (but whose interior designer-purchased chairs are always taken by some annoying person talking business on a cell phone). It has all the various genres covered, including some hard-to-find used books within those genres. On the front windows and along the porte-cochere are hand drawn images of a fantasy world inspired “book world.”

Wilson’s is located in a part of old St. Pete called Woodlawn which has its own unique historical interest and character. Next door—actually sharing the same building as Wilson’s—is Memory Lane Antique Mall (2392 MLK–9th St. N., St. Petersburg, FL 33704). Across the street is an aging three-meal-a-day restaurant (the kind where you can get fried liver and mashed potatoes) with faux Baroque angels painted on the ceiling (Dave’s Restaurant, 2339 9th St N., St Petersburg, FL 33704; 727-895-6057). Dave’s has a nice collection of framed, old St. Pete photos.

Neighborhoods! Sidewalks. Little shops in close proximity. Incunabula…or is it Incubi? A human configured urban life that permits “making a day of it.” The St. Pete we love.

I mentioned in an earlier post that too many Tampans—and I was one like this—think of St. Pete as simply what you have to drive across to get to the beach. Early in my days as a person like that, there was one exception for me: Haslam’s Book Store (2025 Central Ave., St Petersburg, FL 33713; 727-822-8616). Since they were open late on Friday’s, that was my time to go, when I could relax and make it an evening’s entertainment. Haslam’s is an independent bookstore of the sort that doesn’t exist much any more. I use Amazon.com and frequent Borders and Barnes & Noble as much as anyone, but those enormous entities have doomed many independent bookstores to oblivion. I hope that never happens to Haslam’s.

There are, literally, more than a half-dozen rooms crammed with books. They carry all the latest releases, of course, but their biggest strength is the quality and scope of the used books they carry, which are for the most part shelved right along side the new books. The advantage of that for buyers is that if you’re looking for low-carb cookbooks, they’re all in the same spot. Speaking of low-carb, Haslam’s carries–along with other miscellany such as cards, maps, book rests, bookmarks, and such–Atkins low-carb products.

The used books I referred to earlier include some especially interesting categories. One is sheet music. Haslam’s is one of the places a composer or conductor can find full orchestral scores that may have found their way to Haslam’s via some estate sale. There is also an extensive (wish I knew a more forcible word…”vast,” I guess, but I already use that one too much) collection of books on Eastern religions, New Age spirituality, Christian/Hebrew/Muslim mysticism, space alien conspiracies, the occult, and other spooky things. I wander in that section for hours. I wonder how many departed former university profs might be doing the same…!
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Haslam’s is also a good place to buy “Bathtub Books.” That’s what I call the paperbacks you don’t mind getting drenched and swollen when you read them while soaking in a hot tub of Calgon bath bubbles. Stuff like early Ludlum, for instance. Or, Dean Koonz. Stephen King. It’s the breadth and depth of Haslam’s used collection that makes finding such early oeuvre easy.

When you visit the Haslam’s website, be sure to read the store’s history page where you’ll learn that the store was begun during the depression in 1933 by John and Mary Haslam and is now in its third generation of Haslam ownership and operation. The Coming and Past Events pages give you an idea of the special relationship Haslam’s fosters between authors (especially local ones) and their readers. Haslam’s isn’t about coffee shops and pastries (as pleasurable as those are); it’s all about BOOKS. It’s that focus that I hope keeps “Florida’s Largest Book Store” alive for future generations.