All Of Dashiell Hammett

Started the morning off in grand style. Cracked open a collection of Dashiell Hammett stories.

It is a beautiful book that I bought in The Toadstool Bookstore in Peterborough. The Toadstool is my kind of place. A place where hippiesh looking people work there for the love of books. There are a couple of prune faced people there, people who don't appear friendly while giving off more than a hint of pretentiousness, but the overall vibe of the place is book worship.

Humans are a fascinating lot. Some book lovers work in a place like that and feel they have to be consdescending and cold because of their extensive knowledge of literature. Picking and choosing who they will be civil to based on pre-determined prejudices.

Others, I'm sure, are no different than me. Disgusted that their life has steered them to a fate of working, probably part time, in a book store. Not their dream as a child.

The good ones are the ones who naturally love reading. They absorb it, they salivate over every new reading experience, they are overjoyed to just be around books, to be able to touch them and sniff them.

They don't try to be anything. Their love of books oozes out of them naturally and connects automatically with any other true book lover who wanders into the shop.

I am lucky enough to have met a couple of them. People who come into The Asylum. They know me through booze hawking, I know them through book hawking.

These guys are gentle souls and they calm me when we talk.

Very cool stuff.

There is a music store in the back and the first time I walked into the place they were playing the Beatles white album in its entirety.

That made a pretty good impression.

When I first started my hideous job at The Asylum, I explored Peterborough. It is a  funky town nestled in New England beauty.

When I became bitter at my employment fate, I stopped touring the town, even going so far now as to flip the bird when I pass the Welcome To Peterborough sign.

This is unfair. It is not the town's fault that The Asylum is stocked with morons, psychopaths and mental defectives, present company excluded of course.

I'll have to get back to enjoying the town. It really is a cool place.

The book is a compilation of the only five stories Dashiell Hammett ever wrote. It is one of those beautiful books, hardcover, with a gorgeously decorated inset on quality paper, with the page edges rimmed in gold.

I paid $7.50 for it. Almost 700 pages of Dashiell Hammett for $7.50. Amazing.

I read The Thin Man a while ago  and was turned on to this guy. Now I got it all.

It is a very cool thing to hold the collected works of one author in my hands. His entire life's work. A respected and revered author.

I was in church this morning with this book, a cup of coffee and Maka in my lap.

Sometimes life is so sweetly simple, so uncomplicatededly beautiful, that all you got to do is exhale in peace.

Gonna be a helluva day.