Rancho de Fortuna: A Bit of Nostalgia

A Middle Island Press recommendation for those who enjoy taking trips down Memory Lane: Rancho de Fortuna by Kallima Hamilton. This sprightly poetry collection is available at the Middle Island Press website as well as at Amazon.com.

 

There’s Nothing Quite Like a Chapbook.

The tech craze saddens me. Everyone wants to buy more, more, more; to upgrade more, more, more, even when it results in faulty communication of programs inserting the wrong words and making a mess of the sender’s thoughts and intentions. I hope to continue to get by without even a basic cellular phone. I also hope to continue to get by without a Kindle or any other reader of e-books. I’m just fine with paper. I don’t think Mother Earth takes quite the loss in paper production that she suffers with waves of technology bouncing all over her surface.

It is possible that Middle Island Press will offer e-book publishing up the timeline, but I just don’t see that yet. I enjoy specializing in chapbooks. There’s a certain sense of nostalgia in “sticking to the old ways” – ways that remain superior in many ways…

There’s nothing like actually holding a book and turning pages.
There’s little as personal as receiving a book as a gift.
There’s nothing like the look, smell, and feel of a library of books both old and new.

The only thing that I find missing in chapbooks is a sort of hollowness, an emptiness, a “lack of” that I can only imagine would be present in reading from an electronic pocket device of some sort. In that, I miss nothing and gain everything in my craft of setting words to paper, in publishing and printing actual books that don’t require frequent “recharges” to guarantee a good read.

****************

(Middle Island Press specializes in chapbook publishing. We make some of the finest chapbooks in America.)