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I've been feeling like a bit of a bad blogger lately. As my RSS feed clearly indicates, the blogosphere is filled with retrospectives, best-of lists, summaries of the year in reading, analyses of the state of literacy, bookstores, publishing, etc. in the year that's just ending. Last year I posted a list of all the books I'd read; this year I can't even do that, because I've lost track. (Resolution #1 for 2008: write down all books read, preferably on paper, so I can look back at them.)

While I find myself unable to offer a sweeping, overarching point on the year in books, I have been having, rather typically, some personal year-end sorts of thoughts – about where I (and things) have been, where we're going, why are we doing this again, etc.

(As Little Pete from Pete & Pete, the cult TV series of my youth, says in the New Year's Eve episode, "Everybody gets all wiggily on New Year's Eve thinking next year they're going to be better. But every year it turns out they're just a bunch of feebs." His frustration, if I recall, stems from his thwarted resolution to save enough money to buy a rocket pack, with which he planned to fly around and solve all the problems of the world.)

It's a tough time to be a dreamer. The vague somedays of your imaginings have suddenly thudded into the solidity of another year in which your dream has yet to materialize. All your momentum seems, if temporarily, to have petered out, leaving you, a little winded, wondering if it's worth getting up the energy for another run at it.

(In the world of bookstores, this may have something to do with the extraordinary amounts of energy expended in the leadup to Christmas, and the attendant stress and exhaustion, which can leave one longing to just get off the world for a while and let things take care of themselves.)

I'm thinking, a little, of Larry Portzline. As I've thought about his precipitous abandonment of the project of Bookstore Tourism – largely because he was unable to get funding from indie bookstores and trade organizations to fund his awareness-raising nationwide bookstore tour – I've come to somewhat agree with many of those who commented on my post on the matter. That is, it perhaps would have made more sense to seek funding from those with money to spend on cultural projects (for example "tourist bureaus and the Main Street programs" as Barking Dog Books suggests, or even benevolent corporate publishers, or traditional grant initiatives), rather than from the indie bookstores themselves, notoriously strapped for cash and hesitant to take a financial risk – or rather, another risk, since the store itself is a very risky thing to begin.

However, I sympathize a great deal with Larry's frustration and sense of rejection. To have put so much (unpaid) time into what is largely a philanthropic enterprise, and then to receive insufficient concrete support from those whom the enterprise is designed to benefit – it's enough to make anyone throw up their hands and walk away.

It's hard not to see myself in parallel. My own dream, of opening a really great independent bookstore in Brooklyn, seems sometimes further away than ever. I had formed a tentative mental timeline of opening by fall of 2008, but that's been scrapped in light of the ongoing, obvious problem of lack of start-up capital. (For the record, even if I win the grand prize in the wonderful Brooklyn Public Library competition, it won't be nearly 25% of my projected startup costs, the rule of thumb for personal assets required to get a business loan.) I do sometimes get frustrated at the world: that there's so much money out there getting spent on silly or failure-bound projects, but no one has recognized the inescapable genius of my idea and offered to pony up cash, no strings attached. More often, I get frustrated at myself. Something must be wrong with me, that I haven't yet found an investor I can work with, that I haven't been able to save up enough seed money yet to even ask for a loan, that I still have work to do on the business plan, that I'm spending my energy on so many other things rather than the one dream, that other people have managed to open bookstores and I haven't. Maybe I don't really want this enough; maybe it's just a prop to keep my pride intact while working in retail. Maybe I'll want it all my life, and never quite make it.

My last email from Larry was full of anger and frustration. On the one hand, it seems like a good thing for him that he's taking the time to work on a novel in progress, spend time with his newlywed wife, focus on other things. But he sounded hopeless about indie bookstores, and about booksellers, and about the future. He sited the NEA study about the decline in reading, and asked me how I could be among those to discount its ominous findings.

The world is full of problems, ain't it? And there are plenty of people and organizations and statistics and task forces to tell us what they are. There are those whose role it is to tell us what our weaknesses are, so perhaps we can combat them. There are those whose role it is to gather up the range of opinions and find a consensus, or represent the views of the knowledgeable few. There are those whose role it is to challenge our convictions, so that we're forced to think about what we really know and believe.

Turns out, I've staked out a little role for myself too. In the world of books, I'm not as important or influential as many of the people I've quoted and interacted with this year: as John Mutter, the editor of Shelf Awareness; or Judith Rosen, journalist for Publishers Weekly; or Avin Domnitz, CEO of the American Booksellers Association; or Lance Fensterman, director of Book Expo America; or Johnny Temple, director of the Brooklyn Book Festival; or Russ Lawrence, president of the ABA; or Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon; or Len Riggio, head of Barnes & Noble; or the owners of big, wonderful independent bookstores, like Carla Cohen of Politics and Prose or Rick Simonson of Elliot Bay or Sarah McNally of McNally Robinson; not to mention the authors who give us our work to do, this year, every year, like Michael Chabon of Yiddish Policeman's Union or Geraldine Brooks of People of the Book or Michael Ondaatje of Divisadero or Edwidge Danticat of Brother, I'm Dying or Kate Christensen of The Great Man, or….

I'm grateful to be able to talk to and read about and talk about these folks. Their art and their work have made a world I want to be a part of. Which is why I've taken on my little role, of being one voice of optimism about books and bookstores. There are plenty of voices talking about what's wrong, and why we must change, or even why we won't change or can't change. I want to talk about the joy and the hope part of things: the good things that are, and the potential for more good things on the horizon. It's not the whole picture. It's just the part I've got covered. No matter my occasional despair, I can't help coming back to the good things that I know and believe, from business success stories to wonderful reads to great technological developments to communities and relationships. It's one of the only things I know worth doing.

I certainly can't fault Larry in his decision to move on to other things – it seems to be the right decision for him, and he's planted the seed of an idea that is already bearing fruit through others who have picked it up.

But for me, I can't quit yet. Give me a day or two to catch my breath, and I'll be at it again. I want that bookstore, because I want to build something good and solid in the world. In the meantime, I can't help celebrating all the good and solid things that have been built by others. It's what I did last year. It's what I'll do in the year to come.

Maybe this year, I'll get a rocket pack. Either way, I'm going to keep dreaming. Luckily, there are a lot of other folks with rocket packs to cheer on.

Thanks for reading.

Just some thoughts for you this remarkably cold-for-April Monday morn. I've been thinking about illustrated novels. While stumbling about the Central Children's Room the other day, I found a book by Tobi Tobias entitled Jane, Wishing, which was illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman and published by Viking. It's from 1977 and is a funny little book. Like a graphic novel without panels, the dialogue floats free and easy above the characters speaking. As the girl, Jane, wishes for things like luxurious red hair flying free, a life without siblings, and the ability to charm everyone who knows her, the book bounces back and forth between her colorful imagination and the cold black and white of reality. If an illustrated novella picture book exists, this is it.

Then I thought about the great illustrated novels of 2007. Hugo Cabret. The Arrival. Smekday. And then that got me thinking about YA. When are we going to start seeing the illustrated YA novel? It's just a matter of time, no? So far publishers haven't taken the plunge, but eventually someone's going to. And when that happens it will either be awesome or a complete and utter letdown. I'm hoping for the former, but can anyone conjure up a teen illustrated novel written in the last ten years off the top of their heads? Not a graphic novel, mind you. An illustrated novel, like Hugo Cabret (thought certainly not that long). Anyone? The time, methinks, is ripe.