Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 11/16 - Als

Today I celebrate the publication of a book of poetry by one of my customers, whom I call Big Al. He is a gentle soul confounded by the violence around the world and believes he has the solution to it. He and his wife meditate each morning. He is retired from the rat race, having been rich and poor. He describes his poetry as Love Kus. They are short philosophical statements. Here's hoping that they catch the public's imagination and the book soars to the top of the best sellers' list. I ordered a copy, which I bundled with a book of essays by another customer, Bill Brown, taking advantage of gift certificates I'd amassed at Amazon from survey sites. It qualified me for free shipping, something someone with Sicilian blood loves. It was nice to be able to pay those guys back in a small way for buying my books. Here's a link to Al's book:
 http://www.amazon.com/The-Meaning-Love-New-Insights/dp/1477243879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353011610&sr=8-1&keywords=The+meaning+of+love+new+insights

During this afternoon's session of the floating book shop, the gentleman I refer to as the Other Al and Big Al showed up at the same time. BA is Alexander, OA is Alan. OA was my only sale of the day. An avid baseball fan who attends college games throughout the five boroughs, he was unable to resist Now I Can Die in Peace by Bill Simmons, a Red Sox fan exulting in the 2004 championship that broke the Curse of the Bambino, which began when the owner traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in order to finance No, No Nanette, a Broadway play. OA was in Huntington, West Virginia when the Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit to the Skanks that year, and commanded his son to collect all the local newspapers the morning after. He waxed ecstatic about it to me. We Yankees haters are a strange lot. He invited me to pick up some books at his apartment. Since there wasn't any sun to speak of and I was starting to tremble an hour later, I knocked off early and walked one block to his building. Among the donations was a pristine hardcover of Kafka's The Trial. Thanks, Als.
Visit Vic's sites:
Vic's Third Novel (Print or Kindle): http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3