The Book Trade
"The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles." (~ George Orwell. " Bookshop Memories")
I love reading Orwell. The reasons are various. Chief among them is that he wrote about what he knew intimately. Working in a bookstore, for instance. Since I spent sometime of my life directly selling books in stores and then working for publishers whose books, all manner of them, ultimately needed to be sold —to the salespeople who’d then go and sell to another group of middlemen, so to speak.
Most commercial writers are not involved in bookselling, except peripherally when the publicity department sends them on book tours.
That’s not the case with me. A self-published writer, I’m trussed to the bookselling trade. I’m selling to bookstore buyers, to individual readers, to reviewers, to librarians, and what have you.
Do I write for money? I wouldn’t be such a big fool! But I do want my writing read. So I DO think about selling, about placing my book in the hands of whoever will read it.
To that end, here’s the offer:
From April 29 to May 31, I will mail a copy of my essay collection, free, to anyone who will send me the mailing cost (which is $5).
You can Venmo: @Amit-Shah-1950 or send a check to 39 Whitman Street, Somerville, MA 02144
From some readers ~
“Amit’s writing comes from a space within that has an immense capacity to capture beauty in multiples. Descriptions of trees collide with yearning for friends, lives and cities past with today, and yet each stands out with a strange evocative intensity. It’s a beautiful read, the one you’ll carry outdoors on a warm but breezy summer day.”
(~Sohini Chattopadhyay, Assistant Professor of History, Union College, NY)
“[The] collection is a love letter to the transportive power of memory, incandescent with hard-earned truths and undeniable prose.”
(~ Mehr Singh, food and culture journalist, New York City)
“At a time where everything is quick and easy, Revisiting the Mines is a slow and deliberate look at the world and the rich tapestry of life. The book's breadth is vast, encompassing engaging anecdotes from Shah's long career in publishing, the interplay of his family's and the country's history, as well as rich observations from his daily walks. It's a book I enjoyed dipping into at the end of each day, it infused in me a certain calmness.”
(~Veena Venugopal, author, India)
“Revisiting The Mines opens with and then returns to walks around Fresh Pond, weaving Amit’s immediate experience there with clear facts about the history of the place. On both of these levels the pond is very familiar to me and yet, as I read, I felt the reality of its deep past, long before I was born, as a very clear present. I was there hundreds of years ago with members of the Algonquian tribe, and I was there right now on this gray winter day, both at the same time. Such magical weaving of past and present keeps recurring throughout the book in fascinating mosaics made up from seemingly unrelated bits of Amit’s life. This process echoes my own experience as I get older. Tiny moments from the middle of the last century blossom into my present experience with great force and give me a feeling of opening to new dimensions of time. As I read the book and even after finishing it, Amit companions me in this mysterious quality of expanding time. His process flows in with mine, making the whole field of memory richer and more substantial.”
(~ Zoe Stewart, Arlington, MA)
“Beginning 2025 with this engrossing book of essays and photographs by Amit Shah. The writing is crystalline and the entire experience of going through the book is meditatively cinematic.”
(~ Bhaswati Ghosh, author and poet, Ontario, Canada)
“Amit Shah's latest collection of essays, Revisiting the Mines. I highly recommend this book. Much like a sculptor adding material to an armature, Amit builds upon remembrance of his past and its relation to his present, presence. “
(~ Kevin Duffy, Sculptor and artist, Arlington, MA)
“I just finished reading your book. It's really wonderful. I read it in just two sittings as I found it so compelling. Your writing is beautiful. . ..
Additionally, I'm struck by the complexity of this book's approach. You present many disparate memories and reflections that somehow, over the course of the book, form a profoundly true representation of the nature of memory and self-narrative. The book prompted me to think about my own life and the fact that memories are like a collage or patchwork of vignettes or something similar, rather than any kind of smooth and continuous narrative.
I really admire and appreciate the ambitiousness of what is at the same time a humbly honest work. BRAVO!!”
(~ Elizabeth Merrick, Somerville, MA)
“Memoirs, and diaries are often relegated to the annals of literary history unless they are by the famous or notorious. And yet, both are in my eyes among the most honest and courageous literary modes. And so it is with this slim book that contains glimpses from the author’s past, his learnings— personal narrative coinciding with grand world events now and again. Of the much there is to absorb in this book that is quite laden with images and memories, perhaps the biggest one is the courage to look at oneself, one’s own life, use one’s voice and say, this is me, I was here and my life mattered. Readers and writers alike can afford to take a page out of it.
I didn’t buy the Kindle version. Instead I have the physical copy which the author sent my way as a thoughtful gesture.”
( ~ Aayati Sengupta, Bengaluru, India)
“I read this collection of short stories and was filled with curiosity, thought and anticipation to read the next one. Wonderful way to spend time and grateful for Amit’s talent and ability to bring alive his past!
Highly recommend. “
(~Paul Keating, Boston, MA)