Book notes

I was reflecting recently that of the five books I have published, the one that sells best is Elijah and the Ravens of Carith. I don't market any of the books actively, and they are not setting any records for sales in any case. But Elijah plods along, selling a handful of copies in print and in electronic format each month. It accounts for about half of all my sales. Tom kindly says it is because it is a very good book. Perhaps. He designed the cover, basing it on traditional Orthodox iconography with a hint of western art in the raven.

At any rate, this morning's mail brought me copies of a favorable review for the book that sells most slowly, Jerome Gratian: Treatise on Melancholy. (With that title, are you surprised people aren't snapping it off the shelves?) The review appeared in the English Carmelites' Mount Carmel Magazine, published in Oxford. This is a book that is of interest to a small group of people, and Mount Carmel Magazine is exactly the sort of thing they read. So I appreciate the editor's kind words at the end of the brief review: "For all these reasons, this little work has much to offer."

Tom also designed the cover for this book, adapting an old portrait of Gratian. The editorial director of the American Carmelites' publishing house liked it so well that she asked permission to use Tom's version for a forthcoming volume of their own.

I gather that the Gratian (in Spanish, Jerónimo Gracián) book garnered this attention six years after publication because the Carmelites recently had a number of celebrations honoring the four-hundredth anniversary of his death, which occurred in 1614.  They are also working to have him beatified, the first major step along the way to canonization. Maybe this will mean a small bump in book sales!