To be clear about these little book films I make from time to time — no part of the films are meant as a promotion or marketing tool for our bookshop at Longhouse.
In fact, the better majority of the books shown aren't even available in our bookshop. You are looking at my own personal library and I garner my personal library not from any professional status, but as a 100% devoted reader. It just happens to be what is being read at the moment by either my own hunts and findings, or someone has sent a book as a gift through the mail, or it may be a booklet or small book we have published and I'm setting it on the stack as I'm gathering a stack of books for a film.
Donna Fleischer's red covered booklet we reprinted over last week before Hurricane Sandy blew in — so there's Donna at the top of the stack. Same with the Helen Nearing book we published. Last night I wrapped up a half dozen for Greg Joly to have since Greg was instrumental at getting the manuscript into our hands. I took an extra copy and slipped it into the stack.
I seem to be always reading Popa; like what Kent Johnson devised in an all-together possible O'Hara-Koch world; Nate Kluge came from out of the blue via a yet one more little wonder from Pressed Wafer; and the Ed Baker was one of those moments finding a stray envelope while researching something else and asking myself, "What is this?" and having one of the tiniest books I own slip out into my bigger palm.
If you're not in wonder about books, you better pinch yourself.
A book's existence is up there with mountains, rivers, and seas. Try to convince yourself ebooks are the next wonder of the world and you're just kidding yourself while trying to sell your ebooks — may it happen since it is one more avenue of readership — but it isn't a book. . .where some of the most massive and exquisite buildings ever built were built around them.
Once In Vermont films © bob arnold
