"The darling of the world is come..." R. Herrick

I say this every year, but how I wish that I could freeze time. Just now, in this very moment. Still on the sweet, breathless cusp of it all, with the days stretching out in gilded promise, glitter sparkling behind the closed doors of the Advent calendar and fresh bits of holly and greens appearing throughout my house by the day.

I’ve been making gingerbread cookies for the Christmas tree today, and weaving delightfully wonky little cedar wreaths for my kitchen windows. I cut a branch of holly I’ve been eyeing for weeks for the arrangement I always put on the big Empire chest in our bedroom and I ironed my rather tattered but dearly-loved silk ribbons and tied them on the arms of the chandelier in huge, drooping bows.

My fingers are marked with the battle scars of encounters with prickly greens, and even that seems a thing to rejoice in.

Soon the memories and tender joys of this Christmas will join the ranks of all the loved Christmases past. But I am determined to keep this precious time with all my heart, even as it flies. My heart’s deep prayer as I enter into this most sacred season is that I will just love my Savior well in all this happy hullabaloo of preparation. I crave a spirit like that of Brother Lawrence, who made a life practice of acknowledging the presence of Christ and lifting all tasks to Him even in the doing of them.

The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen…I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were on my knees.

That is my ambition, by the grace of God: to prepare my heart and my home for the coming of Love itself.

Happy waiting, dear friends…

"To do Him honor, who's our King, and Lord of all this reveling..." R. Herrick

I agree wholeheartedly with Jodi’s sentiments about November over on Curious Acorn. (Y’all, get to know her if you don’t already. She is one of my best-beloveds.) It is truly one of my favorite months, second only to that holly-crowned queen of a December. Strangely enough, however, I seem to forget just how splendidly I love it until it rolls around again in its modest way, stealing up so quietly I almost don’t realize it’s there until I’m in the midst of it.

“How can it be November again?” I always ask myself.

And why is the year so inexpressibly, unbearably beautiful in its slow death? I am tempted to say that even the wild greening of late April is unable to compare with the loveliness of blood-red dogwoods and ambered hickories. The scent of woodsmoke and decaying leaves is enough to bring tears to my eyes, and there’s a wistfulness to the angle of the light that brings out every detail of the landscape with the fineness of a delicate etching.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot

Autumn color doesn’t arrive full glory till November here in Dixie, but when it does, you forgive her any delay. The sassafras is scarlet, the grapevine is golden, and the trees of the field seem a very rhapsody of crimson and flame. All but the cedars and the pines–they are deepening and intensifying their greens to an almost blue-bloom of freshness, in readiness for their great honor come December…

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been! ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

When I’m adorning my table, I always look to seasonal fruit and garden offerings. This little arrangement from a very special luncheon is a combination of damson plums, mistflowers, Japanese maple and and peegee hydrangeas clipped from my mother’s yard. I do love hydrangeas best in the fall, when their hues have mellowed into the pale greens and rust-tipped ivories that remind me of Jasperware.

I know the lands are lit with all the autumn blaze of goldenrod. ~Helen Hunt Jackson

This old mill we stumbled upon in Cornwall a couple of years ago makes me think of George Eliot's Dorlcote Mill.

There is no author I love better in late autumn than George Eliot. Her poignant insights and descriptions fit my mood like a glove. Right now I’m reading The Mill on the Floss, and, while I’m not sure where the plot’s going, she has given me enough clues already to suspect that Maggie Tulliver’s way in life will not necessarily be strewn with roses. I am literally savoring the words, she writes so beautifully.

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,–if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn’s hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to call “God’s birds,” because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being. Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

November also means certain tasks in preparation for Christmas, like ironing the linens, giving a shine to all the sconce globes, and polishing the silver. I have to confess–I absolutely love polishing silver. There is nothing like the satisfaction of taking something deplorable and dingy and making it sparkle again. There’s a parable right before me every single year as I’m buffing loved things into brilliance once more with a soft cotton cloth.

And lest you think I’m a glutton for punishment, I will let you in on a little secret that a friend of mine shared with me several years ago that has upgraded the act of polishing silver from a job to a literal magic act: Put your kettle on to boil. Then line your sink with aluminum foil and sprinkle it with a generous cup or two of baking soda. When the water is boiling, pour it over the baking soda in the sink and immerse your silver into the sizzling brew. I promise, if you haven’t seen it before, you won’t believe your eyes. The tarnish literally vanishes. Try dipping a corner of a tray or an edge of a plate just to underscore the magic. It is so amazing, and all that remains is to rinse and polish with a nice, soft, dry cloth.

For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement. ~L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Another thing that November has come to mean is novelling. Yes, that is a verb. Just ask Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month, endearingly known as NaNoWriMo. I’ve done it in the past, and it has definitely left its mark. So much so, that my writing partner and I have spent a couple of mad Novembers scribbling frantically after a ridiculous goal we have set for ourselves. And holding each other accountable over the finish line.

We’re at it again this November. I’m plowing through a rewrite of the draft I started last winter. And she’s off on the adventure of a new book. (And trust me–hers is going to be good. You can say that you heard it here first.) The actual word-flow has not been quite the youthful garrulousness of that first NaNoWriMo spree. But it taught me, as I believe nothing else could have, to just keep putting the words down. One after another. That’s all we can do, really. The rest is not our business…

Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many--not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. ~Charles Dickens

In closing, I would just like to wish you all the Happiest of Thanksgivings, the crown of this month of blessings.

God be with you all, friends.

In 84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff said that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for.

It’s true. It’s there.

The England we look for is the England of books and poetry and landscapes of an almost mythical loveliness. Bowered lanes and hedgerows that were familiar before we ever laid eyes on them and hilltops brooding with legends that are true. We’re seeking the almost implausible beauty of a green and pleasant land, and the music of angels in echo-haunted cathedrals.

Something draws us and something breaks our hearts when we leave. Something holds us there, even in our delight at being here. Something about England stirs within us a holy discontent, a homesickness, an untamed vein of Tookishness that never lets us forget that Life is spilling into Eternity.

In the truest sense, we are looking for Home. And while it is inexpressibly, undeniably here, it’s also there.

“It is England we love, we Americans,” she had said to her father. “What could be more natural? We belong to it—it belongs to us. I could never be convinced that the old tie of blood does not count. All nationalities have come to us since we became a nation, but most of us in the beginning came from England. We are touching about it, too. We trifle with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalise over Italy and ecstacise over Spain—but England we love. How it moves us when we go to it, how we gush if we are simple and effusive, how we are stirred imaginatively if we are of the perceptive class. I have heard the commonest little half-educated woman say the prettiest, clumsy, emotional things about what she has seen there. A New England schoolma’am, who has made a Cook’s tour, will almost have tears in her voice as she wanders on with her commonplaces about hawthorn hedges and thatched cottages and white or red farms. Why are we not unconsciously pathetic about German cottages and Italian villas? Because we have not, in centuries past, had the habit of being born in them. It is only an English cottage and an English lane, whether white with hawthorn blossoms or bare with winter, that wakes in us that little yearning, grovelling tenderness that is so sweet. It is only nature calling us home.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Shuttle

Beloved Oxford-town, as golden as ever.

Port Meadow, Oxford

The Roman Road, Dorset.

The view from the hilltop of the farm we stayed on in Dorset. I pretty much lived up here.

The exquisite Temple of Apollo folly at Stourhead Gardens, Somerset

The church at Stourhead. It was all decked out for a wedding and was fragrant with lilies and roses inside.

An idyllic September afternoon and the magic of English light.

Watching the sunset at Stourhead.

The Cobb at Lyme Regis, made famous by Lydia Musgrove's ill-judged leap in Jane Austen's Persuasion.

"Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn..."

Eggardon Hill, an Iron Age hill fort in Dorset.

"A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread..."

Kingston Lacy, a beautiful Restoration manor in Dorset.

Kingston Lacy is famous for its outstanding collection of art, including paintings by Titian and Rubens.

Montacute, a medieval manor house in Somerset.

The library at Montacute.

"Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road..."

It's there, Thanks be to God. And our souls are the better for it.

I am excited to announce that the new collection of books, garnered during my recent travels in England, are in the Shop!

Philip and I had so much fun scouring the countryside for the authors and titles suited to my little niche of a shop—he has become quite the book scout, able to spot a first-edition Goudge or a rare Elizabeth Gaskell a mile off. As the stacks kept mounting in our little Dorset cottage, we both wondered (I, rather mildly; Philip with a bit more concentration) how under heaven we were going to get them home. Let’s just say it was an adventure, and not always of the un-harrowing sort. But they have all safely immigrated to The Colonies, now, and are ready to be dispatched to homes of their own.

People often ask me how I can bear to part with my books. Well, my answer is two-fold. For one thing, sometimes I can’t. There was definitely a small but growing pile of books destined for a forever home with me. I think I bought half of my book club reading list at my favorite Evergreen Livres in the Cotswolds, with a couple more as candidates for the next list on special recommendation from the proprietress. But there is always the immense satisfaction and joy of turning up a really beautiful book that I know one of my customers will love. I have been so blessed to be admitted into so many of your personal tastes and affinities, and I genuinely consider it an honor to connect worthy books with those who cherish them.  I have said this before, but the books in my shop are there because I can vouch for them, because I have a long-standing confidence in the author or because I know that particular title to be of merit, literary, moral, or otherwise.

There are several new Gaskells in inventory, including some really nice early 20^th-century copies. I also have a number of beautiful volumes illustrated by the beloved artist, Hugh Thomson. Working chiefly with the Macmillan Press in London, Thomson typified the gentle nostalgia of such classics as Cranford and the works of Jane Austen with drawings that expressed the sentiment and sensibility of days gone by. (I, for one, admit to a distinct weakness for anything that has his name on it—I just love the way that he captured the flounce on a skirt or a coy rural meeting, awakening a reader’s imagination in perfect sympathy with the original intent of the author.)

Of course, there are new Elizabeth Goudge titles, as well as some really nice George Eliots. Also, several sweet little editions of English poetry, including Robert Herrick and George Herbert. And Dickens lovers will be happy to know that dear old ‘Boz’ is well-represented among the latest acquisitions. If I didn’t already have a copy of The Old Curiosity Shop I fear I wouldn’t be able to let that one go…

So, have a look around—remember to sort by ‘Date Added’—and please do not hesitate to let me know if you have any questions about any of the books. I will do my best to answer them.

I’ve been there and back again, which will hopefully account for my relative silence around here the past month or so.

"Fairest Isle, all isles excelling..."

But I’m home now, blessedly so, even though I left the Fairest Isle behind me, and I’m overflowing with memories and stories. Once the jetlag has abated somewhat and the suitcases have been stowed and the mountains of laundry have diminished, I will be back with some of the lovely things I’ve picked up along the way.

My heart is so full and its treasures so carefully wrapped in the sprawling illegibility of ink-scribbled pages. I am looking forward to unpacking some of them here for you.

And, oh, my goodness gracious–the BOOKS! I cannot wait for you to see them! All throughout our travels I kept my eyes open for just the right sort for my little shop. I hope to begin listing them this weekend, and I promise a post-proper when I do.

Until then, my friends. God bless.

Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow... ~Tom Jones

In the old Victoria magazine, one of my most cherished departments (among a crowd of loved ones) was Favorite Things. I always saved Chimes for last, and I religiously denied myself so much as a peek at the main body of the magazine—with its ravishing spreads of Old Masters-esque photographs and seasonal quotations from the likes of Bronte and Keats flourishing across the pages in sinuous script—until the proper details of the setting were in order: tea, a favorite chair by the window and a little bite of something lovely. (If it sounds like I used to have a party for my new Victoria, then I can only say that it deserved it.) But Favorite Things was always fair game. I could lose myself in it on the way back up the driveway from the mailbox and stand propped against the kitchen counter while my family bustled their commotion around me in an oblivion of utter impunity. Favorite Things was always my gateway to the rest of the magazine, even more so than Nancy Lindemeyer’s lovely letters, which I usually read next. It set the stage, so to speak, and called forth a host of memories and ideas suitable to the season that approached. There was a magic in that column that threw a rainbow tint over the month in question, intentionally highlighting its unique little pleasures and joys, comforts to be indulged in, and the subtle shades of distinction that make a kaleidoscopic variety of a year.

(I am well aware that the new Victoria carries the same feature. But it is not the same. It’s lost the magic. For me, at least.)

It is in memory of this, and perhaps in token of the fact that the start of each new month is always a ‘beginning the world’ for me—and never more so than September!—that I have decided to commence a Favorite Things feature here at Lanier’s Books. There are so many miracles to celebrate as our year revolves: small wonders to mark and keep; mementoes to pocket in tribute to a month’s unique identity. Bits of lovely that happen to make my heart happy at a given time.

It’s all so blessedly new when we turn the page of a calendar. And even more blessedly familiar. I’d like to welcome the changes while honoring the unchanging rhythm that undergirds and makes of all our brave adventuring into a month, at heart, a homecoming.

I had the inestimable pleasure of hosting this lovely little lady for the past year as a memento of a dear friend across the sea. Her name is Mariette and her manners are just as decorous as one might expect. While I was more than happy to return her to her family upon their return from abroad, her place has felt empty, and I have been half-heartedly looking out for a replacement.

Imagine my joy, then, when I spied this dainty creature in an antique shop. She appealed to me so endearingly with that modest expression of hers that I bought her on the spot and brought her home. Her name is Babette. I just love the way that a new spot of pretty can make a whole room feel fresh.

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.

William Wordsworth, September

Amid the longed-for September rains and the sweet decay of leaf mold, the mushrooms always start popping up like magic overnight. I love all the little colonies and clusters along the drive, some so elegant with their slender, white stalks and velvet caps, and others squat and brown and droll to the point of being ridiculous. They are all friends.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

E. B. Browning—Aurora Leigh

I believe that for the rest of my life, September will always make me think of Maine, and one sunset in particular that seemed to sum up the full beauty and sacredness of a week of much-needed solitude with my beloved. We hid ourselves in a clapboard cabin on a remote, spruce-fringed bay, and watched the land turn mellow around us every day. And every night there was a display of fire and gold in the sky and its reflected vanguard on the sea that took my breath with the love of God. This one was at the Bass Head Light.

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.

John Updike, September

Was I the only one that gained serious wardrobe inspiration from the "Land Girls" feature in Victoria magazine, September 1998? I still go back to that one each fall just to stir up ideas for a favored look of mine. I call it "English-farmgirl-chic" and it's all tweeds and head scarves and sensible shoes and sweaters. The Land Girls were simply gorgeous to me, and Victoria honored them well, in my opinion. But it wasn't all about being absolutely stunning in overalls and Wellies. They were an amazing army of women that held the lines on the homefront during WWII and literally kept England from starving while most of the men were overseas. I spoke with a lady in her eighties once who had run away from her home (and her chores) as a girl to join the Land Army. After a few weeks of grueling labor in the fields, she ran away from the Land Army back to her mother's kitchen in Manchester!

How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare,
As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills
The bowl between me and those distant hills,
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!

Lowell, An Indian Summer Reverie

September is my favorite time of year to camp. Nights just chilly enough for a campfire and days long and languid enough to feel like summer and something sweeter. I always forget how many stars there really are until we take our Silver Turtle out under a September sky and remember what a staggering miracle of wonder it is just to be alive. I can never quite fully recapture that sensation under a proper roof.

Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Blessed September, my friends!

New York City, 1931

My car arrived in the darkness before dawn: a darkness that is never really quite convincing in this city that tolerates the night more than accommodating itself to it. I looked out my window on the quiet Manhattan street below. It seemed pent up with an unnatural energy, biding none-too-patiently for the first magic rays of gold that would break the spell and waken it to bustling, incorrigible, indefatigable life again. There is no press of humanity  like the crowded sidewalks of New York City, tourists and natives alike all going and being and doing with such a frenzied intention—and never for a moment forgetting the wild wonder of where on earth they are.

My sister came with me to the curb to see me off and we hugged fiercely one last time in the murky gloom of the streetlights. Four days of laughing till we cried and breakfast at noon and comfortable silence and endless things to say. The long leisure of serious talk and the equal luxury of levity. Old inside jokes and new beautiful memories all heaped with such wealth I staggered under the glad burden.

“Who would have thought that four days in The City That Never Sleeps could leave me so rested?” I wrote her later.

And yet, it was true. Admittedly tired in body, a little sleep deprived and slightly over-caffeinated, yet I was restored and refreshed in so many ways by my time with my sister in her city. She loves it so much; it is evident in every gesture and every look, in the way she strides down the thronging sidewalks with a sense of modest possessiveness and threads the indecipherable maze of the subway. You can hear it in the way she speaks of “The Village” and “The Res” and “The El” without the least hint of affectation. Spurning what she calls the “transplant mentality”, she embraces New York frankly for what it is and with the candid eye of affection accepts its enigmas and frailties along with its towering, titanic superlatives.

“It’s not perfect,” she said, as we walked past a row of tree-shaded brownstones on the Upper West Side. “And it’s not better than home, or any other place people happen to come from. It’s just different—it is what it is.”

It’s New York—the most incomprehensible city on earth. I feel that the essence of all that is best and worst about American culture can be found here in undiluted intensity. Times Square, where I was cat-called, “Hey, Blondie!” and had something unidentifiable spilled in my shoe, is the most garish monument imaginable to a consumer society. Last time we were there I was so over-stimulated I was looking for the exit. Knowing how I feel about it, Liz took me through as a little joke, en route from Port Authority to the subway.

“I thought you needed a sensory overload,” she laughed.

One of the fairy tale bridges in Central Park

And yet, the real overload for me is always Central Park. I can never believe that it’s really that lovely, or that the original 1850’s designers would really have had the remarkable foresight to set aside 700 acres in the midst of what would become a city of eight million people.

“What would New York be without it?” I asked my sister as we sauntered along the Reservoir in the shimmering haze of a summer afternoon.

The rushes were gold-tipped along the fringe of the water and the buildings of Central Park West across the way glistened with silver like a celestial city. There was some exquisite fragrance abroad, and the old trees beneath which we passed were heavy with crabapples, heralding autumn. As at any other time I’ve ever set foot in Central Park, I felt I needed to be looking in all directions at once; there was too much beauty to rest my eyes long in any one place. Everything New York does, it seems, even a cultivated wilderness in the heart of a concrete jungle, is on the grandest scale imaginable.

The Reservoir

Liz had told me we’d need a month to do all the things she had in mind, but despite a rather languid pace, we managed to knock a good chunk off of the list she had composed for my visit. We hit her favorite coffee shop in Union Square and had a sidewalk brunch at the French Roast I love on Broadway. We had tapas in Hell’s Kitchen and ice cream overlooking the Hudson. An aperitif and appetizers in the rooftop garden of her building and a shared falafel under an awning in the rain.

At the Neue Galerie on 5^th Avenue, we had the most exquisite Viennese encounter with pastries and kaffee crème (she had the linzertorte and I put away a schwarzwälder kirschtorte) at the famed Café Sabarsky inside the museum. I thoroughly enjoyed the Klimts and the early twentieth century decorative art of the exhibit, but I have to wonder if the art of the humanity around us in the café was not even more interesting. It truly felt like a glimpse of Old World Europe, with a gentleman perusing a German newspaper on one hand and a party consuming a hundred dollar bottle of champagne on the other.

We also managed to do a considerable amount of damage in the shops of SoHo. I’m not a big fan of shopping in and of itself (my husband may respectfully disagree, citing the relative size and overflow of my closet to his), but shopping with my sister has always been a different matter altogether. With her it’s an adventure and an event; to the plebeian need of a brown cardigan or practical walking shoes has always been added the thrill of the hunt and the spice of triumph. Then, of course, there are always the things that you don’t need, and that’s when her gifts are really invaluable. There’s no one else on earth who will give me so devastatingly honest an opinion. But there’s also no one whose sense of style I trust more entirely. When I walk out of a dressing room and my sister greets me with an, “Ugh, no,” and a dismissing wave of her hand, I know there’s no use arguing. But when she tells me that a jersey frock with an impossibly ruched bodice and bishop sleeves looks like something Cyd Charisse would have worn, I know, amazingly enough, that it’s a go. Particularly when it’s ridiculously on sale.

“But you know you can’t wear it to a wedding,” she reminded me as we left the shop and reentered the throng of Broadway. “It’s white.”

You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl.

I think Liz is always secretly amused by my gaping admiration of her city, but something about New York awakens a shameless wonder in me. I can’t ascend the steps of the Met without a thought of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and her two young friends that once lived there so ingeniously. I can’t cross Park Avenue without stopping in the median to admire it, or walk down 5^th without remembering Judy Garland in her diaphanous bonnet, promenading on the arm of Fred Astaire. Bleecker Street always gives me a turn, and I still think that Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh made a hot dog lunch by the seal pond in Central Park seem like the most romantic date in the world.

“I know I’m a dork,” I said one night, coming back from a late dinner with Liz and her husband Marshall, “but I can’t see 42^nd Street on a signpost without geeking out a little.”

“Miracles happen here every day,” Marshall quipped in feigned profundity.

“That’s 34^th Street, silly,” my sister rejoined. “42^nd Street is where the stars are born.”

“It’s even got its own song,” I added.

One never quite knows how such things happen, but the next instant we were all singing and dancing our way down the sidewalk to a 1930’s show tune. I can’t be sure, but I think Marshall even broke into a harmony.

Which only goes to show that, though my life and my sister’s are as different in externals as that of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, there are some things that will never change.

“You could never live here,” she laughed one afternoon after a full day of adventuring together.

No, I’ll admit that. And I could never make the success of it that she and Marshall have. Our callings call for settings as distinctive as our personalities. I need my wide green spaces and my friendly beasts and long stretches of unbroken silence. I need to hear Southern accents in my ears every day and, strange as it seems, I think I might even just need our humidity.

I couldn’t live in New York.

But it certainly is magical to visit.

I can’t wait to go back and retrieve the part of me that I left there with her. For that, of course, is the greatest charm in a city of enchantments.

My sister is there.

"No friend like a sister..."

"Mrs. Miniver", 1942

I have read and re-read the entries for the giveaway of Mrs. Miniver, and I am just marveling at the sheer goodness of the dreams submitted here. The range of compassion and aspiration–from farming to homemaking to artistic initiatives to the mastery of musical instruments–is really astounding, and the particularities of your visions are nothing short of breathtaking. (If you want to be inspired, or to be reminded of the exquisite uniqueness of individuals, then have a look at the comments section.) Thank you all for your candor in sharing such treasures of your hearts. As I’ve perused them, I’ve felt like I was looking into a box of precious jewels.

And I am pleased to announce that the winner of the drawing is Erin Henry, whose dream is to adopt a child.

(Erin, if you will send me your address via my secure contact form or via email to laniersbooks AT gmail DOT com, I will package your book and drop it in the mail post-haste.)

Thank you, all, again, for joining the celebration with such generosity and joy. I am still so dumbstruck that you take the time to stop in and read here, much less leave such gracious words of your own. I wish that I were able to respond personally to each one of your comments, but I do want you to know how much I appreciate them.

God bless!

August 2, 2010

One year ago today my dream of an online bookshop went live. I remember the excitement of messaging computer to computer with my husband and a dear friend on the west coast who had been helping us as we tweaked the final details behind the scenes and prepared to fling open the virtual doors of Lanier’s Books. And, suddenly, after years of waiting and an all-nighter or two, it was real. With a click of the ‘publish’ button, I was a proprietress.

In the moments that followed, I wondered what I had done. Would anyone come—would anyone care? In a world of e-books and high-speed everything, was there even a place for such an old-fashioned establishment as I sought to create?

You settled my fears, once and for all, that first day. I was so overwhelmed with orders that my mother and my husband both had to help me pack books. And in all the days that followed you have blessed me with the priceless gifts of your friendship and your trust. I really wish that I could tell each of you personally what your goodness has meant to me—that you would even take the time to come by and read my words and have a look at my shelves is wonder enough. But your kindness, in word and deed, has nearly undone me at times. I can’t tell you how often I have said to Philip, “The nicest thing about having a bookshop is being reminded of how many truly lovely people there are in the world.”

Back in the spring, I wrote a piece for the Art House America blog about my motivations and experiences as an online bookseller, and I could not handle the subject without talking about you:

In the months since Lanier’s Books opened its virtual doors, I have been astounded by the beauty of the people who have wandered into my shop. Almost every encounter has carried the fragrance of Kingdom kindness, and the generosity of my customers has put as much hope into me as the reading of my beloved books. I have sent out orders and received gifts back in the mail: lovely handwritten letters and recordings of original music and even a watercolor painting freighted with gracious sentiment. One reader actually sent me a book she knew I’d love! It’s been the happiest of occupations, this quiet connectedness and sharing, and I am grateful beyond words for the grace-laden intersections my little shop has afforded me.

You can read the rest here, if you like.

I’m celebrating a crop of friendships today, along with my little shop, and in token, I’d like to host a giveaway of one of my favorite books, Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. To enter, leave a comment telling about a dream of your own–one that’s either materialized or in the cloud castle stage. The comment form will be open until midnight EST on Wednesday the 10^th of August and a winner will be selected by the old-fashioned method of name-drawing.

Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for being the reality behind this dream of mine. You have shown me that the community I dared hope for all those years ago is not only possible, but unspeakably precious.

Grace and Peace.