Author: Betsy Burton
I've been on quite a reading kick lately, if I do say so myself. It reminds me a little bit of how my best friend Leslie goes through painting binges, but when she's done with a painting binge she has something to show in a gallery or hang on a wall, and when I'm done reading a book, it just goes back to the library, and I have nothing (other than a short little review in my blog) to show for it.
I saw Betsy Burton's book a few months ago when I was at The King's English, a bookstore here in Salt Lake City at the corner of 1500 South and 1500 East, but instead of buying it, I came home and reserved it from the library. It sat on the bookshelf in my bedroom for a couple of months (I kept renewing it) but for some reason I'd decided that it would be boring, a dry history of a bookshop, and I never picked it up. I should have known better, because The King's English, as an institution, is anything but boring, and I basically read the book in a single sitting.
After my most recent trip to The King's English, I wrote a post about it at Feminist Mormon Housewives, wondering about the place in our commercial culture that independent and local institutions hold when chain stores are often cheaper with equal or better selections. After reading The King's English, I'm a convert to it and other independent stores like it. In fact, I don't just want to support Betsy Burton; I wish I could be Betsy Burton. Like her, I live and breathe and dream about books. In a very small way, I see my blog blog posts as a chance to evangelize what I love to others, just as she does in her store (on a much larger scale). And while she laments about accounting and managerial problems, it's obvious that the chance to know and become friends with the wonderful minds that have created the books we love so much is ample reward for Betsy. She lives The King's English, and she obviously loves it.
Burton also provides great lists at the end of each of her chapters, related to the subject of the chapter ("banned books" for example, in her chapter about censorship), and I felt the same sense of being overwhelmed and close to tears, that I often feel when I go into a bookstore with a pad and paper and write down lists of titles that look interesting. There are just SO MANY good books I haven't read, and even if I read all day, every day (which sounds heavenly) from now until I die, I won't even make a dent. In fact, I'll probably forget about 90% of my list before I even have the chance to reserve the books from the library.
So what's a voracious reader to do? For this voracious reader, at least, the next step is to go down to The King's English and buy the book. Then the lists will be intact, Burton and her staff will get my support (small as it is), and I might even find something else to add to the pile on my bedside table while I'm there.
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