Ahem.

Dear Barnes and Noble:

I am yesterday in receipt of your threatening letter, sent to an address on which the forwarding order has long expired, commanding me to file a W9 before January 22 or face fines and reprisals from the IRS.

No, I am not faxing my social security number to a machine that, for all I know and suspect, dials into the mail room at B&N corporate.

You acquired Fictionwise in March 2009, and could have contacted me any time during the intervening nine months in order to acquire an updated W9; you had a working email address; a telephone number; and a PayPal account direction.

This "emergency" is not of my making; it is of yours, and I will be pleased to explain that to the IRS.

Sincerely,

Sharon Lee

A room without books...

So, today, I took a break to visit my friendly neighborhood library, across the hallway, because I have no cash and I must read. According to the online catalog, the college library had a copy of Master and Commander available, and since I've never read any of O'Brien's sea things, and everyone to whom I've ever confessed this failing of character has immediately informed me that I. Will. Love. Them., I figured to give it a try.

The book in question was filed in the PRs, all the way on the far side of the library, but still on the same floor as my office. I arrived in the proper aisle, looked around, and felt. . .eerie. As if I had shrunk, or gone sideways in time, or come home.

The books in that section were books from my childhood -- authors I recognized from so long ago I was someone else; books that were old when I read them, looking just as they had looked, in another library, 40 years and more ago. C.S. Lewis, Frank Yerby, George Orwell, Doris Lessing, A. A. Milne, William Locke. . .I'm forgetting the other names again, even as I type them . . .somebody named Phillpot? Who had shelves and shelves. . . Chloe Marr -- but that's Milne, again...The Red Planet -- another Locke, I think...

...anyway, I finally did get to the O'Briens, and took away Master and Commander, along with Till We Have Faces, because I don't remember reading that one, and The Beloved Vagabondbecause I do. Or at least I think I do.

Strange places, libraries. Anything can happen.


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"A room without books is like a body without a soul." Cicero, presumably