Seconds
Seconds tick. Seconds satisfy. Seconds duel…sometimes. This second installment got me thinking about all the definitional work that “seconds” do. Second chances. Second stories. Second novels. Seconds double and triple as nouns, adjectives, even adverbs. Seconds can be a heavy lift, the sophomore effort, is often the most challenging one, and frequently, an underappreciated or even an excused one.
Well, Blue Heron Books is here for it. We can’t thank you all enough for showing up, from near and far, for our Grand Opening, and for following through on the second stages of our development.
Like seconds, it has been so satisfying and rewarding to meet with you, hear what you’re reading, what your interests are and what titles you’d like to see on our shelves.
I love these exchanges and have truly enjoyed hearing about both your reading lives and, in so many cases, your writing lives, as well. High Falls and our surrounding community is full of poets, novelists, essayists, and playwrights. I thank you for stopping by, sharing your work, and ideas for readings and events. I look forward to seeing you again, as many of the titles I’ve ordered are now on our local authors bookshelves.
In the Reads: Shelf Life and Second Novels
This week I’m going to highlight two novels, one of which was an astounding second effort, countering so many of the assumptions we make about seconds, as being, meh, not as good as that first book, which blew us all away, and another, which was the author’s fourth book, so 2-squared, but her first literary success:
Hèrnan Dìaz’s Trust, is a second effort that was the winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the 2022 Booker Prize and won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for literature, sharing with Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. Trust’s critique of capitalism and the destructive effects of wealth, pairs well with Edith Wharton’s incisive look at greed and the alienating impact of status, The House of Mirth, my favorite Wharton novel. If you’re looking for a bang, bang play, on a rainy weekend, and there happens to be none of your teams in the baseball playoffs ☹ , this is a good one.
As we wrap up Banned Books Week, our biggest shout out goes to Blanche Wiesen Cook, activist, pioneering historian, and biographer of Eleanor Roosevelt (a 3-volume study). It’s the 75th Anniversary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Blanche will be speaking at Blue Heron Books on October 21st, Saturday, from 4-6PM, so mark your calendars and pull up a seat.
Also, as a reminder, check out our website, www.blueheronbooksny.com, for our events and updates, or, if you live far afield, to order your books online via our shop and Bookshop.org or for your audio books via our shop and Libro.fm.
Until next time, when third time’s a charm,
Read on,
Jean