Greatest Thing Of Anything: The Book Barn

When I worked in Maine, I wound up renting an apartment right across the street from a bookstore. It was something of a catch-all place. There were plenty of new books on the first floor, along with local titles, magazines, locally baked doughnuts, stuffed animals, and children's toys. The basement was stuffed with used books, and the paperbacks there were yours for 50 cents each. I'd usually make it a point to stop in during the weekend and see what was available.

I've usually got a couple of books that I'm reading at any given time, and when I moved to Connecticut one of the first things I did was get a library card. When it comes to purchasing books, however, New London is lacking. A couple is trying to raise money to open one up, but that's a work in progress and it only started recently. When I arrived in 2010, it wasn't long before I missed living so close to a bookstore and I asked around to find another one.

The first recommendation I got, without hesitation, was The Book Barn.

(bookbarnniantic.com)

I'm just realizing that this is the second entry I've done about a barn business in the past couple of months, but believe me, they're both awesome. It's always discouraging to hear about the challenges bookstores are going through as people start to rely more on electronic readers, but The Book Barn has bucked that trend. It opened in 1981, and since then it has expanded to acquire more real estate in the touristy coastal town of Niantic. Aside from the original location, located on the outskirts of downtown, there are two related shops right on the main drag. The stores are open 12 hours a day for every day of the year except Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The titular barn site has the majority of titles, but quite a few of the books are spread across the site in sheds. The cheaper paperbacks tend to be neatly packed into wagons parked outside these places. If you're in the mood for a game, there's also a giant chess set and a basketball hoop.

bookbarnniantic.com

It's always good for bookstores to have a unique character, so here are some of the things that stand out the most about The Book Barn. There are a bunch of cats, mostly friendly, roaming the property and they have a guide to identify who's who. A couple of goats have their own enclosure as well. Most books go for four or five dollars, with some of the older or more plentiful paperbacks priced at a buck each. Visitors are welcome to free coffee, mini donuts, cookies, and cheese crackers, with the chiding caveat that they're for all guests so don't be greedy. The section on Napoleon is labeled "That pestiferous little Corsican." The impulse buy shelf includes things like Team of Rivals (and yes, I did snatch that up right away). When they purchase books, the volumes spend some time in a shed called "Ellis Island" where people can peruse them to get a first shot at purchase before they're organized in the correct sections.

Evinrude hangs out by the register (bookbarnniantic.com)

The business describes itself as having a web presence (it has a detailed website, after all) but it doesn't have any aspects of e-commerce about it. You're not going to be able to make any e-reader purchases there, and you're not going to be able to search the collection of half a million titles and buy books online. But they assure you that if you're looking for a particular book, the staff will easily be able to help you.

And you can find some pretty excellent things just by browsing a collection as big as this one. I discovered one specific title I was looking for, on a group of World War I pilots from Yale University, perched atop a tall bookcase about military aviation. Stopping into Book Barn Downtown not long after seeing the biopic Chaplin, I couldn't resist buying a copy of a hefty biography on the actor. It was amid the room containing books on every sport imaginable that I found Bill McKibben's Long Distance, one of the few titles available on cross-country ski racing.

A few library sales and gifts have contributed to my bookshelf, with paperbacks stacked horizontally a couple of rows deep and others perched haphazardly on the vertical rows. But the welcoming atmosphere of The Book Barn, and the fact that I rarely leave without at least one purchase, probably goes a long way toward explaining its current state.

The Apex of Crazy: Terry Jones and the Quran of Fire

There is blood on Pastor Terry Jones' hands.

The last time I did an Apex of Crazy post was also about book burning, and of the Bible no less, so it seems only right to weigh in on this while it's still a current topic. I'm not even sure whether I can give Jones credit for canceling his planned event, to burn copies of the Quran at his Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida on September 11. He's been weaseling around on the issue in recent days, calling it off when he claimed that he'd brokered a deal to stop the proposed Park51 Islamic community center a few blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. He's now waffled because the imam he spoke with said he doesn't have the authority to make such a deal, and merely offered to open a channel of communication on that issue. Jones, of course, has whined that he was lied to, but who is more believable: the man who said he single-handedly resolved one of the most controversial issues of the day or the Florida imam who said he can't influence New York politics?

So now the event is merely "suspended," with the less principled half of Jones' church (you know, the one that hasn't deserted him over this issue) apparently waiting on his e-mail to say whether it's a go or not.


Even if the event does not occur, the uproar over the planned burning of the Islamic holy book has resulted in at least one death. A riot broke out in Afghanistan today on the eve of the planned burning, and one man was shot as protesters burned an American flag and hurled rocks at a NATO base. Word of Jones' idea spread from the local area to the region to the nation to the world. His church has become a world outreach center all right, but it has resulted only in condemnation and hatred from all quarters of the globe. It would be improper to say the rioters had no responsibility in the casualties that occurred in Afghanistan, but Jones' threat was the root cause of their actions.

The issue has a number of different nuances. People have complained of a double standard, not just in this matter but in general, regarding jokes and swipes that can be taken at Christianity but not at Islam. There's the argument that it's an issue of free speech, and that Jones has the right to burn the Quran, or the Bible or Harry Potter or any book he sees fit to torch. Despite the fact that I thoroughly denounce Jones and disagree with him wholly, I also find it rather malicious that he's been made the subject of a rumor suggesting that he was arrested for child pornography. Several media reports have been defensive in light of accusations that coverage of the pastor is fanning the flames of hatred, saying social media is a key factor in the story's spread; indeed, word would likely get out even if every news agency decided not to report the story, and the old cliche about not shooting the messenger certainly applies to the media here. I can only hope that a proposal this rash will dull the anti-Muslim sentiment in this country and blunt its frightening increase in intensity.

In the end, Jones is just a full-blown hypocrite. He's an opponent of the Ground Zero community center, but he wants to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001 by an act of hatred rather than remembrance. Any act of book burning is an attempt to strangle free speech, so he can hardly argue that point. And finally, he doesn't even have a permit to stage the burning, so it becomes a legal rather than a constitutional issue if it proceeds.

One wonders if Jones, about 13 years younger and sprightlier than hatemonger Fred Phelps, is simply looking to usurp the title of King Douche.

"If chance may have me king, why chance may crown me. Er, I mean, God hates you! Fag!"

Let's imagine what might have happened if Jones hadn't staged this whole charade. He wouldn't have gotten his 15 minutes of fame, but he would at least have his whole flock. And a man in Afghanistan would still be alive.

He may have respectfully asked people to remember 9/11, the people who died, and given a little spiritual guidance on the events of that day and what people can do to make the world a better place. That, in the end, is what religion is all about. It is people like Jones, like Phelps, like the men who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, like anyone who squeezes the words of any religious text and makes poison drip out, that turn religion from a guide into a weapon.

The Apex of Crazy

I have a friend who probably never thought he'd have something in common with the fringe of the Christian right: Bible destruction. We were both on the cross-country ski team at our college, which took us on quite a few overnight trips to go racing. On one trip, he was feeling particularly sacrilegious and tore a page out of the motel's complimentary Bible. He may or may not have flushed it down the toilet afterward.

The point? To show that God wasn't going to destroy him for such an infraction.

While the motivation is different, the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, has decided to do something similar for Halloween. These seem to be the kind of folks who consider trick-or-treating, drunken costume parties, haunted houses, and perhaps even a pleasant church event with hot cider and games to be the devil's work, so they've opted for the old standby: a book burning. Which, in and of itself, wouldn't be too noteworthy except for the fact that they're going to be torching Bibles.

If the Bible hates gays so much, why is it so flaming?

OK. So apparently God wrote the King James Bible, and Satan wrote every other version? Or perhaps the translators of the King James version were all true believers and everyone else was an evil Unitarian? What it boils down to is a church believing that one translation of the Bible is so unimpeachable that they're destroying any and all other versions they can get their hands on, despite the fact that it's all pretty much the same message. Seriously, how far to the right do you have to go to think that the Bible is a book that needs to be destroyed? Political thought might well be a circle, because I think you can see the far left from that vantage point.

I wonder what this church thinks of a project by Conservapedia (a right-wing Wiki) to re-translate the Bible. The idea has gotten a lot of flak, considering how the site has an obvious slant with article subheadings such as "Liberal Hysterical Criticisms." So people have been having fun suggesting how the users will translate the Bible, with well-known passages being horribly misinterpreted to become little more than Republican screed.

They'll be lucky if the project even gets off the ground. Right now, users have only taken a few stabs at a couple of passages. Still, despite the bent of the site, the project at least seems to have the reasonable goal of producing a translation of the Bible based on user input. While it would be more accurate to do so under a site like Wikipedia, which is edited by people across the political spectrum, it's still a worthwhile project and one that will have an interesting outcome.

Even if it's totally satanic.

Christine (semi-spoiled)

A B-52 accidentally dropped an atom bomb on a South Carolina neighborhood in 1958. And Khrushchev became the Soviet Premier. Oh, and this car came out, I guess.

I just finished reading the Stephen King novel Christine today. I remember discussing Stephen King in general with my neighbor, who cited the novel as one of the author's lesser works. I'd have to agree. It's a good enough read, but it's kind of repetitive. And I suppose our hero doesn't fully realize how the '58 Plymouth Fury can fix its damages after splattering people or getting beaten up, but he has some idea of that. And yet his master plan to destroy the evil car is still "smash the hell out of it" (after deciding against burning it or blowing it up).

Hey kid, you seem smart. Here's an idea. Ever seen a car, haunted or not, drive on its friggin' roof before?

Volvo Christine, forever smote

Just get a big forklift or something and flip the thing over. Like these construction workers with a Maserati belonging to a former Miss New Zealand gal.



In their defense, it was probably evil.

I'm not sure I've even seen 1,000 places total

I stopped into the local coffee shop today, which has a pretty sizeable library in one of the sitting areas. The fare ranges from Dan Brown to surfing magazines to Lord of the Rings. I came across 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and was surprised to find that it's about as heavy as a brick. I first came across the book at Heathrow International Airport in London, having visited a handful of sites listed in England. I probably haven't seen many more sites since then.

I have somewhat mixed opinions about this book. On the one hand, it's probably the most comprehensive travel guide ever made, covering the planet as it does. It probably leaves a fair amount out, considering a follow-up book lists 1,000 places in the United States and Canada alone. One thousand places and events out of the roughly 510 million kilometers of planetary surface might seem a little scant, but most of that is probably just ocean anyway. But at the very least, reading through the brick of the book is sure to be educational and help you decide on a few vacation destinations.

On the other hand, the very title of the book almost seems to mock you. It might be possible to see all of these places before you die...just. The owner of said coffee shop has managed to get around to four continents over the course of his life for work and play, and has probably seen a good chunk of the listed sites. Aside from that, you'd probably have to hit something like 15 places per year over the course of your vacations. And most people probably get a later start or don't exactly have the resources to go bumming around Tunisia at age 83.

Flipping through the book, I was a little amused that some places simply don't show up. You don't need to see anything in the state of Kansas before you die, including a museum that includes the command capsule of Apollo 13 and a huge range of other space race artifacts.

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, which you don't need to see before you die.

I found out about this interesting-sounding location in the flats of tornado land via Wikipedia, after checking to see if the rumor really was true and there's nothing interesting in Kansas. The book also contends that there's nothing worth seeing in the area of Maine where I've lived for the past two years. Some days that seems true, but some of the hikes around here certainly seem worthwhile.