Back when there was no internet, and therefore no AbeBooks or Amazon or all the other bookselling entities that Jeff Bezos owns, there was Edward R. Hamilton. Hamilton’s catalog showed up in my mail every few weeks. It was tabloid size, thick, maybe 36 or 48 pages, printed on cheap newsprint, unless it was toilet paper. Scores of discount books were crowded on each page, with postage-stamp-sized black-and-white reproductions of the covers and thumbnail descriptions of the contents in microscopic type. The organization was nuts—books were herded into categories, but the categories stopped and restarted in big chunks and tiny bits, seemingly randomly from page to page. I would read it all the way through, looking for the $5.98 and $2.98 deals.
One of the books I saw on offer was a Smithsonian Nature Book by someone named Lawrence Wishner, titled Eastern Chipmunks: Secrets of Their Solitary Lives. I didn’t buy it. Sure, chipmunks were adorable, but would I ever read it? Continue reading “Steward of chipmunks”