“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” — Jane Austen
“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” — Confucius
With just four days left until publication of The Four Ms. Bradwells, these two quotes come to mind.
On the first: I feel like I start and end every day with the same to-do list even though I have been working all day. I know I’m not spending the days on “busy nothings.” I’m talking with radio hosts who have read the new novel and want to help spread the word, and to journalists, too. I’m writing posts for bloggers who are kind enough to share their space in this web-oriented world with me. I’m coordinating with publicity and marketing some really wonderful upcoming events – including one for the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois to be held in Chicago May 19 – details to come on that, but if you’re a Chicago area lawyer, do mark your calendars now. It will be a celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice (an event my law school pals will remember occurred just after we started law school).
I’m also hearing from booksellers that they have boxes of books, that they won’t go out on the shelves until Tuesday, but that they are gorgeous!
And I’m finding in the midst of this the truth of what Confucius says. I am reading the news – about Japan, about Libya and Cairo and Bahrain – and sometimes wondering what good writing does in this kind of world.
But for a reassuring answer to that, I turn to the wonderful historian, Barbara Tuchman, who said
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind.
Books are humanity in print.”
And so I’m doing my best to set my light glowing at the top of my lighthouse, to shed what light I can. – Meg
