He didn’t mind being introduced as “the beautiful Binks the Goat,” even if that moniker barely hinted at the talent behind the face. But in later years, he did mind being called “the still-beautiful but perhaps tumorous Binks the Goat” – understandably, although it was a small price to pay for one of the greatest Book Barn animal careers to date.

Binks the Goat, who died Monday at the age of 12, strode through several significant eras of Book Selling history in New England. Dropped off at the Barn in 2000, this Connecticut born goat started as a small time highlight in the background of a booming business, and in later years grew to A-list popularity.

Binks the Goat’s career has remarkably few might-have-beens. Though Binks would seem to have been born to be the one and only Goat – and he was convinced of it himself – he shared the role with several fellow Goats. He was predeceased by his wife Sarah, and his children Gonzo, Trick and Treat. Binks the Goat never was pregnant, a stereotype that’s best laid to rest. His life was a ballad of helpless love, but the goat who sung it was far from helpless.

So, one of our loves at the Barn (aside from books and cats) is food!  At any given point in the day, one of us is probably dining, snacking, munching, or, at the least, enjoying a cup of coffee.  Since our passion is your passion I thought we’d give you some easy and delicious ideas for picnic lunches to bring and enjoy. 

How about a fresh tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese salad.  Simply take some fresh cherry tomatos and chop up some fresh basil and mozzarella.  Mix it together with a bit of balasmaic vinagarette, olive oil, salt, pepper and a bit of lemon. This stays very well for a couple of days and is really refreshing on a hot day!

If you’re thinking more along the lines of sandwiches try a Thanksgiving leftover wrap.  Start with a whole wheat or spinach wrap and put in some sliced turkey, cranberries (or cranberry sauce), some quick turkey stuffing, and romaine lettuce.  Put on a bit of mayo if you like, you can spice it up with some cayanne pepper or garlic.  Wrap it all up and you’re good to go.

One summer favorite is, of course, potato salad.  I like to keep things easy so grab some red potatos- the skin is thin enough you don’t need to peel them and boil them up.  Towards the end of boiling the potatos throw one or two eggs for the last 4 or 5 minutes.  Peel the eggs and mix in some mayonaisse, parsley, garlic, onion, salt and pepper.  Add in a tad of mustard for a bit of flavor and cut the potatos up into bite-sized pieces and mix all together.

Store bought lemonade has nothing on this homemade recipe.  Buy half a dozen lemons and juice them (or buy a bottle of fresh lemon juice).  Put a pot with just a couple cup of water on low on the stove and pour in a cup of sugar (add more or less as you wish).  Once the sugar has melted in pour the mixture into the lemon juice and simply add cold water until desired amount is reached.  Try a bit of ginger root grated and mixed in as well if you want a little zest.  Just a helpful hint-as you add more sugar the lemon taste will become more pronouced. 

If you’re looking for a healthy, cool dessert cut up your favorite fruits.  Our suggestions are grapes, cantalope, strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, watermelon, and raspberries.  Put some whipped cream or cool whip on top and you’re good to go. 

We hope to see you soon with your picnic baskets in tow.  Just remember, it might be safer to eat if you bring a treat for our cats!  If you guys have any favorite recipes feel free to share them with us in person or on our facebook!

Happy New Year everyone!

Here’s a mental game you can work on the next time you’re standing in a long line or stuck in traffic. See how many authors you can think of whose first and last name start with the same letter. There are some examples below to get you started, but first some rules;

When we say authors, we mean anybody who has written three or more books, on any topic. So, a novelist like Clive Cussler obviously make the cut, as would philosopher/scientist Daniel Dennett. Kim Kardashian has only “written” one book, so people probably wouldn’t consider her an author. (These rules are only for fun, of course. If you’re waiting in line at the DMV and need to pass the time, feel free to use whatever rules you want!)

Here are some examples to get you started;

• Arthur Agatston- Cardiologist and author of the various volumes in the South Beach Diet series
• Bill Bryson- Much beloved travel and history writer
• Clive Cussler- Adventure novelist
• Don DeLillo- Postmodern novelist
• Eve Ensler- Feminist playwright and writer
• … and Zig Ziglar (technically Hilary Hinton Ziglar)- Motivational speaker and business writer.

So what ones can you come up with?

SO—WHY THAT SWASTIKA?

        One of the questions we are frequently asked at the Barn is why there are sometimes swastikas on the covers of old reprints of the works of Rudyard Kipling?  Was he a Nazi sympathizer?  What up with that?

        Kipling of course was born and spent many years in India, and though he was derided for a long time as a jingoist and imperialist, he felt much affection for his birth-country and was indeed one of the major conduits through which Asian culture reached the West.   The swastika was one sign of this knowledge and affection.  Though adopted as a symbol of the Third Reich, it is thought to have derived from a Sanskrit word, “svasti”, which meant happiness or well-being; the symbol dates back to the Indus Valley civilization as well as classical Greece.  As the symbol travelled with Buddhist teachings to China, its resemblance to the Chinese character for the number 10,000—which was itself used as a synonym for eternity, or an unlimited number—led to its being carved on the chest of many statues of the Buddha, whose teachings were held to have infinite variety and application.  So it was a symbol Kipling would commonly have seen, and which was chosen as an appropriate decoration for his books.

       Note than in its use by the Nazis the direction of the swastika was often reversed:  the original Indian symbol revolves in anti-clockwise direction, the Nazi swastika in clockwise.  Its adoption by Hitler is usually linked to the excavations of Troy by Heinrich Schliemann, who considered the swastika a possible link between the Germanic, Greek and Indian peoples.  This led—-by reasoning too circuitous to be summed up or even believed—to the notion of the Aryans being a northern “Master Race”; the rest, we know to our sadness, is history.

        Kipling, though conservative and even right-wing in many matters, was no supporter of the Nazis.  When, in the twenties, the swastika began to be associated  with the National Socialist Party in Germany, he arranged that the symbol be removed from the covers of his books.

                                                                                           -Glenn

Hey guys,

So this year our attitude toward Halloween is go big or go home.  We’re decorating up all three of our stores.  Inflatables, witches, graveyards, you name it, we got it.  Spider webs anyone?  We’re also having two major contests for our customers that run through the end of October. 

First off is a costume contest.  Dress on up and visit the main Book Barn location and send us in a picture to our email (book.barn@snet.net)  to be eligible.  Every age is welcome to participate, though it should be noted, we are impervious to the “cute baby” thing. The winner will be picked by you guys and will win a ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR GIFT CERTIFICATE to the Book Barn!!!

I know, you’re thinking, it can’t get better than that.  Guess again!  We’re also doing a pumpkin carving contest.  Bring us in your pumpkin as well as sending us a picture to our above email and you could take home ANOTHER ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR GIFT CERTIFICATE to the Book Barn!  These gift certificates never expire and are good at all three locations.  Even the tax is taken care of!

Besides from those two awesome contests we’re doing Friday read-a-louds for the little ones between 7PM and 8:30PM at the main Book Barn.  If it’s raining it will be held, same hours, at our Midtown location. 

But wait there’s more!  At Midtown we will be handing out Halloween coloring book pages for the kids to take home and color in.  Bring back the colored in pages to be hung up at our store and they’ll get a little prize to hold onto. 

Pass this along to friends and family and join us for a month of fun and prizes!!  Make sure to keep up with our Facebook page for more details!

Part of the nature of a used book store is that the books are, well, used. While we only buy books that are in good condition, we often take in books that people have highlighted, underlined, taken notes in, doodled in, etc.

There are a lot of you out there who really love buying those books! We’ve had people tell us that they love to see what the previous owner highlighted. It feels like you’re getting to know someone, and it gives you a whole new way of looking at the book.

Well love it or hate it, it turns out these notes and doodles actually have a name, and they’re part of a rich historical context.

It would seem that for nearly as long as people have been writing things down, other people have been writing in their margins. Early bible manuscripts have marginalia that helped priests with their homilies. And tons of famous writers have crammed the books that they own with marginalia. David Foster Wallace, for example, seems to virtually “carry on a conversation” with the authors of his books.

And maybe next time, you’ll look differently at the notes scrawled in the margins of a book.

So some of us at the Book Barn have been really enjoying Scrabble lately. We figure that there are at least a few of you out there who enjoy the game as well. So we did a little combing, and found a list of every legal two-letter Scrabble word, with their definitions. Now you can stand up to anybody who challenges your right to play the word “Hm” or “Nu” or “Qi.” You’re welcome.

If you like Scrabble, you might also want to check out the book “Word Freak” by Stefan Fatsis. Fatsis is a sportswriter and frequent contributor to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” To write “Word Freak,” he immersed himself in the world of competitive Scrabble. The result is really interesting and really fun to read, even for casual fans. You can pick up a copy at our downtown store, if you’re interested.

Here’s hoping you’re all having a good summer so far!

Hello friends of The Book Barn! My name is Peter. You might have seen me working at one of the stores recently. I’m posting on the blog because I just finished a really excellent book, and like everyone who finds something they really love, I now want to share it with others.

The book is called Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and it’s written by Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman. Actually, I’m pretty sure that it was at least partially ghostwritten, but that’s no matter. The book is an anthology is anecdotes and musings from Mr. Feynman’s life both inside and outside the world of science.

Before reading, I was only dimly aware of Richard Feynman. I knew he was a really smart scientist, often mentioned in the same breath as Einstein. Actually, that’s all I knew. In the book, I learned that he was a physicist specifically, and a winner of the Nobel Prize. He worked at Los Alamos during WWII to help design the atomic bomb. And he has a sense of adventure to make for some really great stories.

One of my favorite chapters (though it honestly is almost impossible to choose) is “Certainly, Mr. Big!” in which Mr. Feynman recounts a summer that he spent in Las Vegas. His sense of adventure is on full display here, and the story ends up reading something like the script for The Hangover. Not only does Mr. Feynman meet professional gambler Nick the Greek and befriend several showgirls, he also insinuates himself into the inner circle of a celebrity high roller. Together, they drive expensive cars around the city, woo women and generally paint the town red.

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! is one of those books where the words spilled off the page and into my head to influence the way I see things. By way of example- while I was reading this book, my car broke down. After taking it to the mechanic, I was told that some part had broken, and antifreeze was leaking into the motor oil. It was going to be $600-800 to fix the part, but the engine might be shot anyway. There was no way of telling without spending money on the repair. For day I dithered on whether or not I should gamble on fixing the car or scrape together the money to buy another one. During all of this, I read the chapter, “An Offer You Must Refuse.” Feynman describes a bidding way between two universities that wanted him in their faculty. After going back and forth between them, he chooses sticks with CalTech, even in light of a much better offer from Cornell. “It’s much easier to just plain decide,” he writes. I reflected on this for a while, then called the mechanic and told him to go ahead with the repair. I haven’t worried about it since.

This book will instill more than decisiveness in it’s reader though. Feynman seems to take such immense enjoyment from interacting with his world that it becomes infectious. His sense of adventure and scientific curiosity are worthy of emulation, and they’re great fun to boot (I defy you to read the chapter “Testing Bloodhounds” and not try your own experiment). Whether you know nothing about science, or you’re a Noble laureate yourself, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! will bring you enjoyment, and quite a bit more.

Oh, and since this is the Book Barn blog, I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that we have several copies of this book, as well as other science and non-science writings by Richard Feynman, at our downtown store.

We at the Book Barn love our feline friends. Although our buddies have the best home around there are many cats do not. We are also in kitten season which means there is a boost of mothers and their kittens that need good homes. We’re featuring Compassion for Cats wich is a no-kill cat rescue out of Lisbon, CT. They are way over filled right now but the cats there are beautiful sweethearts. There is an adoption event at the Petco in Waterford, CT. today between 2-5. Stop on down if you’re in the area to meet some of these great kitties! Also, if you stop by the Book Barn we keep up a poster with pictures in the Last Page and feel free to ask any of our staff questions, especially Laurie.