The North Fork Bookman: Vampires and Early Christianity

Wills Gallery and Used Books – Open 10:30 to 5:30 Monday through Saturday. 229 West Bridge Street – Hotchkiss

The North Fork Bookman:  Vampires and Early Christianity

By Thomas Wills – Wills Gallery and Used Books – Hotchkiss

Unlike other businesses around the Valley the Hotchkiss used book store begins to slow down as the holidays approach. The tourist traffic slows to a trickle and we are not the uppermost in most minds when it come to local gift buying.

The seasons have turned and the woodfires are burning in the two stoves on most days; the heater in the main room and the old cookstove in the back room that formerly was a kitchen and now contains the cookbook section and the health books. The cats spend more time in the store, usually sprawled on the rug near the radiating warmth.

The smaller rooms are chillier in the winter and visitors frequently bring a stack of books out into the warmth the main room to sort out final selections nearer to the stove. The bookstore gives a taste of what life was like before modern ducted heating systems.

Although I do not sell as many books during the winter months a steady supply of new volumes arrives on a near daily basis from our many trade customers, occassional batchs that I purchase, and once in a while a generous donation to the cause. I am always behind on blending new stock into the old and usually only the best books find their way onto the shelves immediatly while “regular” new arrivals linger is stacked boxes for extended periods.

One new arrival of note is a collection of Playboy magazines of mostly recent 1990’s-2000’s vintage from an estate. Playboy’s now seem an almost charmingly quaint form of pre-internet male oriented literature/erotica. A fun gift idea for the hubby?

And then there is the question of what the bookstore owner is reading. I am still on a kick of reading a steady stream of books on the early history of Christianity. All are of the serious scholar variety although I do occassionally flip through one of the related ” Christian conspiracy” books of various vintages that pass through the store: i.e. The Passover Plot, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (the main basis of the Da Vinci Code),The Jesus Family Tomb, The Tomb of God etc. These are entertaining, but are light on the facts, something very clear if one is up to speed on what scholars actually know.

So far the best books I would recommend to anyone interested in the subject are the numerous well written books by leading New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman. I’m still catching up on some of his older works. Also eye opening is The Five Gospels, a compendium of the decades of work done by the scholars of the Jesus Seminar, who debate how much of the teachings of Jesus probably orginated with him and how much is the result of later (or earlier) “tradition.”

My entertainment book of the month is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which could be seen as a thousand page retelling of the Bram Stoker Dracula story/myth. It is an amazingly well-written book that proceeds by telling stories laid over multiple other stories all steeped in mostly real history involving Vlad Tepes, the basis of Stoker’s vampire. A thriller for lovers of history.

Other recommended books: A Climate for Change by Rev. Drew Farley and Prof. Katherine Hayhoe. A book on climate change aimed at evangelical Christians that attempts to separate facts from politics. Hayhoe is a leading climate scientist but also an evangelical Christian from a missionary family.

The Stone house Inn Congratulates the Cal Ripkin 9-10 year old Hotchkiss Bulldog team! www.stonehouseinn.com