And given it's the city's major thoroughfare, I'm screwed

[sovay]

A thing that does not make me happy: The Book Shop in Ball Square is closing. Not only is it yet another small independent bookstore meeting an untimely end so soon after the demise of Medford's Bestsellers Café and Cambridge's Lorem Ipsum, it is a small independent bookstore whose absence I will find devastating. When I moved to Somerville in the spring of 2013, I lived in Winter Hill; I walked by the Book Shop every time I went to visit derspatchel on foot. Frequently I stopped in. It is permanently associated in my mind with blossoming spring, my laptop over my shoulder and my corduroy jacket over my arm, and a bag of donuts from Lyndell's; with being incredibly, impossibly happy. Even without that lost and nostalgic amber, it was a used book store ten minutes' walk from my house. I hadn't had one of those since the Book Rack was in Arlington Heights and I was living at Brandeis for most of those years anyway. The Book Shop had an astonishingly good selection of used science fiction and fantasy, as opposed to the obligatory wall where Stephen King paperbacks go to die, and I found at least one of my long-haunting childhood books in its children's section. I bought nonfiction from it, including a book on the Epic of Gilgameš that cited a paper I'd first heard as a lecture, my first year at Yale. These past few months I have not had much money to spend on stray treats, but I was looking forward to the spring and walking home with donuts and books again. That will not happen. It is not that I wish for stasis, but I would like some good things to stick around, thank you. Especially if they're bookstores I can walk to.

A thing that does make me happy: tonight for dinner we made a pot roast. Brown a substantial chunk of bottom round roast (still with the butcher's string on!) with salt and black pepper on all sides, add three-quarters of a gallon of apple cider on the edge of sharpening, handfuls of dried apple and peach slices, and an assortment of spices mostly on the spectrum of cinnamon to paprika (plus freshly ground cardamom; I love owning a mortar and pestle), clap a lid on it and leave it in the oven on 350°F for something like three and a half hours; at the end of this time, it will fall apart when poked with a fork. The last hour and a half, we left the roast uncovered so that the liquid would reduce; it didn't quite make a gravy, but the fruit slices dissolved very satisfactorily. The beef came out sweet and savory and faintly medieval. We used the last fifteen minutes to bake drop biscuits on the upper rack; they were enough of a success that I ended up covering a second one with marmalade and just eating it for dessert, although the process of chopping the butter with the edge of a metal spatula reminded me that we really need a set of kitchen brass knuckles. Tomorrow, I hope to make a corn pudding.

It is still snowing outside. And apparently it's supposed to snow again on Thursday. I have no idea where we're going to put it. Maybe we're going for '78 2.0 after all.

Comments

[phi]

I'm sorry about The Book Shop :(

[kore]

Ohh no. That's awful.

[genarti]

Oh man. I'm sorry to hear that.

The pot roast sounds delicious, though!

[yhlee]

I'm sorry.

[umadoshi]

That's wretched about the Book Shop. :( I'm sorry to hear it.

[gwynnega]

I'm sorry to hear that used bookstore will be closing. A beloved used bookstore near me closed a few months ago, and I still miss it. Good bookstores should stick around!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

jinian taught me that you can keep some butter in the freezer and grate it into your biscuits or pie crust. I still want the pastry cutter for wrangling large amounts of dough, but grating the butter is far quicker and easier than any other method I have met.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

It's a peculiar sort of record, but Boston officially, in fact, had the snowiest week of weather since modern recording began, per National Weather Service Boston. (34.2 inches, as of 1pm today. Which means there were a couple more inches added onto it.)

Still doesn't match up to '78 in my brain, but if the thing forecast for Sunday/Monday is as snowy as they're thinking it might be, I will officially be Tired Of It.

Also, my sympathies on your bookstore. It's not the bookstore of my heart, but I've been to it and it was/still is a good 'un. (And losing more independent bookstores is not of the good.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You have already broken the record for most snow accumulated in a week (last held in 1996--when we were there, and shoveling).

I like the image that your nostalgia creates in my mind: you with jacket, donuts, and books, with blossoms all around ... Maybe some brave soul will open another one. It won't be the same, but it might still be good...

The beef came out sweet and savory and faintly medieval ---sounds delicious.

[mroctober.livejournal.com]

Off-topic: Could you send me links or files of the gay short stories you wrote that were published in 2014?

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry your bookstore is closing. Our favorite, Borderlands Books in San Francisco, is also closing, and that makes me very sad.