Whenever I get a little money, I buy books;
if any is left over, I buy food and clothing." - Desiderius Erasmus. When I came upon this quote, I was searching for some bromides to throw at my protagonist, suffering one more loss––her house was burning when she returned from a train trip where she found––
        Since I’ve been in Eureka Springs this time, I’ve bought books. And I haven’t even been to the quaint, old, wonderful Carnegie Library’s used book sale. I’ll go tomorrow, I tell myself, knowing that I already have so many books, I’ll never read them all.
        But how does a wanna-be novelist, whether at thrift stores or flea markets, pass by titles like Writing About Literature (B Bernard Cohen), A Short Guide to a Happy Life (Anna Quindlen), At First Sight (Nicholas Sparks), Southern Strategy (Bob Lancaster), The Trial (Frank Kafka), and Famous American Plays of the 1920s––each, fifty cents?
        Also My Staggerford Journal (Jon Hassler), Beau Geste (P. Christopher Wren), The Kite Runner (Khaled Hossenini), On Paradise Drive (David Brooks) and Too Far to Walk  (John Hersey) ––all hardbacks–– for one-or-two dollars each?
        My sisters will attest that I lag behind at the books on our annual trips ––out of town or state–– to shop at flea markets. Are they fledgling novelists? No. Not yet, anyway.
        I’d no sooner ignore books than I would ignore a piece of the rarely-found green Harlequin dinnerware like I inherited. Or a sheep-motifed magnet, iron paperweight or sheep-shaped skillet-handle lifter for a sister’s collection.
        Last year on such a trip––to northwest Texas. One morning, in our ground-level, forest-edge condo where we had to watch out for scorpions (and kill one), roaches, and inch-long ants,  all four of us were reading––sans TV––while we waited for the towns nearby to open for business. That’s when I finally read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls––a fifty-cent bargain from another year, another place.
    
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        That library used book sale I mentioned earlier? I did go––on a Saturday morning. Hundreds of (mostly) hardback titles drew me (and others) like the song of a siren. No way could I look at each title, but I picked through and chose enough to use the paper money I took ($6). Most were fifty-cents, some one dollar, some two.
        I selected $5.50 worth, including Singing Wheels, my 6th grade reader ( in 1947), Reading Lolita in Tehran (AzarNafisi), A Book of Questions (translated poetry of Pablo Neruda), Your Journey (a gift book by Susan Florence), and Notes to Myself (Hugh Prather)––each fifty-cents.
        At one dollar each, I selected The Art of Readable Writing (Rudolf Flesch), The Memoirs of Maria Brown (John Cleland; originally published in 1766!) and Dave Barry Turns 40.
        The final morning of this year’s stay, I sat on the porch (not eight feet from the street) reading and making notes from an old copy of Writer’s Digest before I had to return it.
        An earlier spring fling at this very same place spawned the following poem,
  
  
     Spring At Dairy Hollow (blank verse)
  
  The door is open, window, too. From here
   (my desk), I see the broken sidewalk, street
  and then the graveled rise––a lay-by, Brits
  would call it––where my car is parked. The gray
  eternal stones that hold the mountain back
  sit columned, as an obelisk. “Leaves, like scenes
  of Muslims crowding Mecca, lie beneath
  in thrall and homage. Spindly redbud blooms,
  its branches laud behemoth’s majesty.
  Then, out of nowhere, deafening noise erupts
  like helicopters hovering. I rise
  and from the door, see motorcycles round
  the curve. I turn away; they pass, and peace
  resumes. The mood is gone. I close my book
  attack the writing tasks. But first,
  I answer email.