Category Archives: Books Spoken Here: Home, Field, & Backyard

SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME, AND VERY LITTLE SHELF SPACE LEFT TOO!

At Home With Books: How Booklovers Live With and Care For Their Libraries by Estelle Elllis, Caroline Seebohm, and Christopher Sykes

At Home With Books: How Booklovers Live With and Care For Their Libraries by Estelle Elllis, Caroline Seebohm, and Christopher Sykes.

Ed Abbey, Oh Ed, We Miss You So….

By Michael Patrick McCarty

 

Books by Edward Abbey. Photograph with staff and desert landscape in background
Come And Take It, If You Can

 

Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire. – From Wikipedia

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I never met the man called Edward Abbey, but I once knew people who knew him, and I always felt that I had reached into at least some part of his realm through reading many of his books and published works. In the end, his words have always left me with a grin, and I would guess that is exactly what Ed would have wanted. I can see that sly, rascally smile of his even now, in my mind’s eye.

Those are the kind of friends that I like to have in my life, and I call Edward Abbey “friend”, as much as anyone else I know. A friend can lift a heavy burden in the darkest times, sometimes with words alone.

The unrelenting assaults on environment and human nature are legion, but there is hope. There is always hope. Edward Abbey tried to tell us that.

He always had a way of keeping it real, while reminding us not to sacrifice our human soul before the madness of it all. Be quick, he might say, to immerse yourself in the enveloping salvation of the natural world.

And so I say, take heart. When the problems of the modern world lay heavy on your brow, and the latest insults upon the natural world threatens what’s left of your faltering sanity – think of Ed. With all of our problems and faults, he never gave up on the inexhaustible courage of the human condition,  nor the limitless capacity of mother earth to right the ship, and heal.

Perhaps above all though, Abbey would have been the first to defend your right to wander freely upon the wild lands, or to do whatever you wished in your own backyard. He had a thing or two to say about guns, government, and monkey wrenches too, if I’m not mistaken.

Edward Abbey, we miss you so!

Hayduke Lives!

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“One final paragraph of advice. Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast…a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half for yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the griz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards”.

“When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government – and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.”

Edward Abbey

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Published Works

Fiction

  • Jonathan Troy (1954) (ISBN 1-131-40684-2)
  • The Brave Cowboy (1956) (ISBN 0-8263-0448-6)
  • Fire on the Mountain (1962) (ISBN 0-8263-0457-5)
  • Black Sun (1971) (ISBN 0-88496-167-2)
  • The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) (ISBN 0-397-01084-2)
  • Good News (1980) (ISBN 0-525-11583-8)
  • The Fool’s Progress (1988) (ISBN 0-8050-0921-3)
  • Hayduke Lives (1989) (ISBN 0-316-00411-1)
  • Earth Apples: The Poetry of Edward Abbey (1994) (ISBN 0-312-11265-3)
  • Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968) (ISBN 0-8165-1057-1)
  • Appalachian Wilderness (1970)
  • Slickrock (1971) (ISBN 0-87156-051-8)
  • Cactus Country (1973)
  • The Journey Home (1977) (ISBN 0-525-13753-X)
  • The Hidden Canyon (1977)
  • Abbey’s Road (1979) (ISBN 0-525-05006-X)
  • Desert Images (1979)
  • Down the River (with Henry Thoreau & Other Friends) (1982) (ISBN 0-525-09524-1)
  • In Praise of Mountain Lions (1984)
  • Beyond the Wall (1984) (ISBN 0-03-069299-7)
  • One Life at a Time, Please (1988) (ISBN 0-8050-0602-8)
  • A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Notes from a Secret Journal (1989)
  • Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951–1989 (1994) (ISBN 0-316-00415-4)
  •  Letters
  • Cactus Chronicles published by Orion Magazine, Jul–Aug 2006 (no longer active,)
  • Postcards from Ed (book)|Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast (2006) (ISBN 1-57131-284-6)
  • Anthologies
  • Slumgullion Stew: An Edward Abbey Reader (1984)
  • The Best of Edward Abbey (1984)
  • The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader (1995)

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We generally have several used and collectable Edward Abbey Books in stock.

You can find a current list Michael Patrick McCarty, Bookseller, HERE.

Michael Patrick McCarty

You Might Also See Edward Abbey Quotes

Thirty Years of Books…And So Much More

A Day Well Spent

 

This March marks the 25th year anniversary of our launch into the business side of the world of used and rare books. And what a big, big, wordy world it is.

Along the way, we found out what it was like to run a mail order business with its printed catalogs and pay by good check, long before “Google” was a household name. We discovered the skills needed to successfully operate a brick and mortar bookstore on main street U.S.A., never imagining that such a hopeful enterprise would run into the concrete walls of the big box stores and mostly go the way of the dinosaurs. We rode the wave of Ebay, Paypal, and the internet bookstore, and watched the book world change in so many ways that it’s sometimes hard to remember why we became booksellers in the first place.

It has been a unique and rollicking adventure, though not recommended for the faint of heart. You might say we’ve handled a lot of books in those two decades, and I’ve got the creaky and complaining back to prove it. I don’t mind telling you that it is not an easy way to make a living, particularly in a world of ever-increasing electronic distractions and a struggling world economy. It is not a place for anyone wishing to avoid a challenge, or face a steadily rising and unending learning curve. A great memory doesn’t hurt a thing either, especially if you can keep it.

I can also say that I would not have changed a thing about the journey. We’ve met a lot of great people along the way – people who love the books as much as us – and more. Our conversations within the limitless universe of mind bending ideas and printed happenings have been epic, and I can still hear many of them reverberating in my head from days so long ago.

“Wow, you must get to read a lot”,  is an oft-repeated phrase. Well, don’t we wish.

The life of a book dealer is a full one, and the motto “So many books, so little time” is the Bookman’s lament. We make a living one book at a time, and every decision to buy is based on our knowledge and experience and the ability to find a buyer and turn a profit, each and every time. Buy wrong, and die.

No wonder that “No pain, no gain”, and “risk it all” are the rallying cries of the fiercely independent.

Small matter, I say. It is the tightly focused hunt in the dimly lit bookstalls and the love of carefully bound volumes that drives us before the hounds. Perhaps you know just exactly what I mean.

To all of our customers and the cherished book friends we’ve made over the years – Thank You – and best wishes from the deep well of our book loving souls. It is your love of words and unquenchable thirst for knowledge that keeps us doing what we do. For that, we are most eternally grateful.

Here’s to another 25 years of black ink and the printed page, and the people of the book – God willing….

Michael Patrick McCarty                                                                                                      

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Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.                                                              Frederick Douglass

Some people will lie, cheat, steal, and back-stab to get ahead…and to think all they have to do is read.                                                                                                              Anonymous

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* You Can Browse Our Book Catalog Here.

We never tire of talking books, so please let us know if you don’t see what you are looking for in our catalog.

A Book of Home – And Life

“…We have not only regarded home itself as an institution of nature, but in the treatment of almost every subject we have tried to involve the exposition of some related natural law, because every relation of the home life is the outgrowth of some law of our nature and our surroundings. It has been our aim to make this book a scientific treatise on the various phases of the home, and in this respect, so far as we know, it stands alone.” – From The Preface

 

Front Cover Our Home Or, The Key To A Nobler Life. By C. E. Sargent
Come On In

 

Here Offered:

Our Home Or, The Key To A Nobler Life. By C. E. Sargent. Published by King, Richardson, & Co., Springfield, Massachusetts and Des Moines, Iowa, 1889. About 6″ x 8″, with 432 pages and several full page illustrations.

With chapters on the nature of the home, influences, childhood, home training, rewards and punishments, amusements for the home, education of our girls, and boys, books for the home, self culture, resolutions and individual rules of life, manners, family secrets, duties, economy of home, courage to meet life’s duties, leaving home, the widow’s home, the old-fashioned home, and much more.

Bound in decorated cloth. In Very good condition, with some general rubbing and cover wear.

$50 plus $4 shipping U.S. 

 

Front cover decorations Our Home or, The Key to a Nobler Life Sargent, C. E.
A Nobler Life

 

Illustration Our Home or, The Key to a Nobler Life Sargent, C. E.; The First Botony Lesson
The First Botany Lesson

 

Illustration Our Home or, The Key to a Nobler Life Sargent, C. E.; In the Library
In The Library

 

Illustration Our Home or, The Key to a Nobler Life Sargent, C. E.; The Shaded Retreat
The Shaded Retreat

 

Books Spoken Here – and Writing Too!

See our Catalog of 7,000 Used, Collectable, and Rare Books Here

You can search by author, title, or keyword, and more.

View  the complete list Here.

Still can’t find it? Please let us know. We may have it, in the backroom.

Michael Patrick McCarty, Bookseller

 huntbook1@gmail.com
Paypal or Personal Checks accepted.

Prepper Pete – A Book For Kids

A Simple Message

“Prepper Pete Prepares” by Kermit Jones, Jr. is the first prepping book written exclusively for kids. “Designed to educate children in a language where they can be taught and entertained at the same time, this series highlights a handful of reasons to prepare in a simplistic, non threatening manner”.

It’s never too early to begin to teach a child a little independence and self-reliance. Wonderfully illustrated, it is a great read and a great way to help children understand prepping in fun and thought-provoking terms.

Preparedness is the key!

Read More About Pete’s Adventures Here.

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Food Freedom – and Prepping Too!

Michael Patrick McCarty

 

Mr. Jim Kjelgaard – Patron Saint of Dogs, Boys, And The Outdoors

Big Red - Big Friends
Big Red – Big Friends

I often wonder where I would be were it not for a man called Jim Kjelgaard. Chances are you may not know him by name, though his reach and influence continues to this day. His work influenced a generation of young boys, soon to be men, searching for the soul of adventure and the heart of the wild outdoors.

Wikipedia defines Mr. Kjelgaard as an American Author of Young Adult Literature, which in my way of thinking is like saying that an ocean of water is very wet. As an author of forty novels and countless short stories and other works, he was certainly that, and more. Much, much more. He meant everything to a young boy bursting to learn what lived beyond the outer limits of his own backyard.

I have always been a reader, blessedly so, and born for it I suppose. I took to books like black ink yearns for the creative freedom of an empty white page. My face became well known in any library I could enter, until I had read most everything I could find on animals and fishing and all things outdoors from their limited selections. And then an angel of a librarian handed me a copy of Stormy, a story about an outlaw black Labrador Retriever and his owner written by this fellow with the strange name. It was nothing like anything I had ever read and I was hooked like a catfish on a cane pole.

I was to discover very soon that dogs were a prominent feature in a Kjelgaard story. It’s easy to see why, since there is something completely natural and magical about young boys and their dogs.Dogs are loved when they are properly trained. You can also click here now to train your dogs .The combination just begs for adventure and open space to run and roam. They encourage each other on and on, over the hill to the next discovery,  past the bend in the ever beckoning road. Together, there is nothing a boy and a dog can’t do especially when it goes to Spectrum Canine Dog Training – professional dog trainer to get in good shape.

I have read a little about the author’s life and I am convinced that he understood and loved the outdoors with a passion that even he could not convey. You can feel it on every page and in every character of every sentence. He had a remarkable ability to put you in the moment, in and of the scene, as if it were written just for you. He tells you that you can experience it too, if you chose. Don’t wait, he says, just get out there and listen to the music of the hounds between deep breaths of pine and sugar maple under the brilliance of a harvest moon.

His books hold the waving fields of marsh grass and the woods, full of white-tailed deer and bobwhite quail and the screams of brightly colored bluejays. He shows us boys with guns, back when it was a natural and good thing that made you smile, knowing that some lucky family was sure to be enjoying a meal of squirrel or cottontail rabbit very soon.

Open to any page, and you can hear the sounds in your head as if you were standing there yourself. It was a guaranteed transport to a technicolored world of motion and light with a dog by your side. You can check out Woofie’s Franchise if you are a pet lover and want to build your business in the pet service industry.

Jim has been gone for some time now, just like the world he once knew. His world was defined by the movements of animals and the rhythm of the seasons, punctuated by the sounds of drumming grouse and the chorus of frogs in the evening. The comforts of family and home life ran strong throughout his stories. It was what made it all work.

It was the knowing that safety and the comforting hearth of home stood solidly back where you had come from, when you needed it, which give us all the strength to be brave and venture out and abroad.

He was taken from us much too soon, by illness and despair, and though that world he inhabited may be gone his voice is as relevant today as it was back then. In fact it is even more important than it ever was. He is a beacon of light for the spirits of young boys and their four-legged companions, filled with the quest for exploration and the simple, unmitigated joy of being a boy.

Of course I never met him personally, though I wish I had. Sadly, he was already gone when I was barely born. I would give much of what I have just to thank him for all of his precious gifts to me.

It is because of Jim Kjelgaard and men like him that I have wandered the wilderness and spirited air, and lived a life filled with my own stories to tell.

Turning to face the world, what more can a young boy hope for?

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*Many of Jim Kjelgaard’s books are still in print across the globe, and he is a pre-eminent favorite among those who wish to homeschool. So, if you somehow missed him, it’s not too late. You may also want to track down a copy of the 1962 Walt Disney film “Big Red”, named after that marvelous and unforgettable Irish Setter of the same name. It will make you want to run out and acquire an Irish Setter too!

 

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A Book For all Time

 

For Sale:

Stormy. By Jim Kjelgaard. “Allan Marley and his father have lived together  in the untamed wilderness of the Beaver Flowage all  their lives. But when Mr. Marley is jailed because  of a bitter feud, Allan suddenly finds himself on  his own. Then he meets Stormy, an outlaw dog who  has been accused of turning on his owner. Allan  knows that the big black retriever has been  mistreated, and he works hard to win the noble dog’s trust  and affection. As allies, Allan and Stormy overcome  every danger they encounter in the unpredictable  wilderness…but can their bond protect Allan from  the viciousness of his father’s human enemies? ”

Published by Holiday House/Scott, Foresman, 1959. Hard cover. In Very Good condition, without Dustjacket as issue. This is not an X-library copy. Uncommon in this Edition. $65 ppd in U.S. Please contact us to purchase (Subject to prior sale).

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Backwoods Freedom! – and Dogs Too.

Michael Patrick McCarty

*Watch here for a fine selection of Jim Kjelgaard First Editions and Autographed Works.

Out of the Wind

https://steemit.com/hunting/@huntbook/jim-kjelgaard-patron-saint-of-dogs-boys-and-the-great-outdoors