Ravenswood Used Books

Welcome to September! The new month brings big changes to this bookstore. Janis has flown to Europe where she will spend the next year teaching English to French kids somewhere down in the south of France near Montpellier, just a few miles from all the places where Picasso lived and Gerald and Sarah Murphy invented being really cool! Gertrude Stein lived down that way, too, only many miles to the east, closer to the Swiss and Italian borders. Janis is all the way west of there, just a short train ride from Barcelona. All of these place and people names are indirect literary illusions to books which we can sell to you or recommend that you buy from another store which has been smart enough to stock them in advance of this posting!
Although the actual person, Janis herself, is probably irreplaceable, the space she once occupied, or part of it, is now taken up by Gabe, our new two days a week major domo who will sell, buy, organize and schmooze away at your command. Gabe is a writer,editor,actor, and an experienced bouquiniste, having worked for another Chicago bookstore which has not paid for naming rights in this blog. He has come to us highly recommended by many old pals through an odd chain of coincidental small world degrees of separation.
Kirk Robinson, who is married to Mrs. Robinson, stays on in his own evolving time slots. He teaches full time at the U of Illinois in Chicago, but since he lives upstairs of the store, has worked at New York's Strand Bookstore ( they can send promotional considerations via the Bridgeview Bank ), and is such a good dresser, our board has advised that he be kept on at almost any cost.
A new shipment of books in many languages has just arrived and will be followed by another as soon as the donor gives us a call. There are classics in French, German ( Gothic type and modern ), and Italian. As always, classic literature, famous books, and well known authors arrive every day. We have two books signed by the Arizona golfing great, Dan Quayle,