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The idyllic summer includes days lazing away under a tree reading the best book.   In effort to entice a family away from the hectic pace of  life and towards a few days of lounging with a great read, here are some choice treats:

The Parent – Who Needs a Quiet Break More?

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt takes the well-crafted family saga to a new level.  Byatt’s writing is lyrical.  The main character is a children’s book author and the tone throughout draws the reader in like a fairy tale.  The literary, historical and art references interwoven into the story move the story forward in an enlightening and entertaining manner.  This is a 21st century Dickensian novel.

Young Adults – Plot Driven Books Designed to Engross the Reader

As an epistolary novel, My Most Excellent Year:  A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, & Fenway Park by Steve Kluger moves fast, some portions are written in zippy emails or text messages.  This group of friends, one love baseball, another theater, another accepts he’s gay, find themselves, each other, and their way through high school. There is an element of romantic sparring, even for the parents.  Kruger creates an atmosphere of friendship and acceptance combined with a humor that casts a warm hue over the book without making it schmaltzy.

Middle Readers – Ready to Read on their Own

Before there was the Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins wrote the engaging Underland Chronicles.  In the first book, Gregor the Overlander, Gregor is stuck babysitting his sister, Boots, through a New York City summer.  Gregor worries about his father who disappeared three years earlier.  While doing laundry, he notices Boots disappears down a chute and follows her, thereby starting his own modern day Alice in Wonderland story.  Gregor discovers a kingdom of rats, cockroaches, bats, and other crawlers that needs saving and that their enemy holds his father prisoner.  Creating a world that holds the readers attention for numerous books, this series provides a wonderful summertime adventure.

Picture Books for the Pre-Literate Set

Deborah Diesen’s The Pout-Pout Fish in the Big-Big Dark tells the story of a brave fish on a journey to find Ms. Clam’s lost pearl.  He searches everywhere, expect down in the deep dark trench.  With friends and courage, he overcomes his fear of the dark.  The rhythm of the story is a delight to read aloud and the pictures are cute and lively.  With all the ocean imagery, it’s just the right choice for a day at the beach.

We all know one of the benefits of buying from Amazon is that in addition to the discounts, we don’t have to pay sales tax.  In California, that’s a significant savings with sales tax in excess of 10% in some counties.  It is also patently unfair.  The local businesses, and for purposes of this blog the local bookstores, can’t match the discount, let alone avoid paying the sales tax.

Whether or not a business is subject to a state’s sales tax depends upon its presence in the state.  Have a store in the state, clearly the business is present and subject to paying sales tax.  Having a warehouse in one state and only shipping items to buyer in another state doesn’t qualify as having a presence in the state and a sales tax isn’t charged.  Technically, the buyer is supposed to track how much she spent and the appropriate sales tax and pay the state.  I wonder how many people are doing that, I’m guessing I could count them on my fingers and toes.  But what about the Internet seller who has people with a presence in the state selling its items (affiliates), should the Internet seller pay a sales tax?  Arguably, these people are subject to income tax, but so are our small businesses.  Moreover, given the changing shopping patterns of more people buying online and one seller, Amazon, comprising a majority of that business, should the laws change to capture a sales tax?  The California legislature (along with other states, notably New York) said ‘yes’ and changed the law to capture sales tax from Amazon (although at a reduced 7.75% rate).  A law change that arguably keeps up with the times and captures hundreds of millions of dollars in tax.

For better or worse, California has a quirky legislative history.  In an effort to combat the power of the railroads over 150 years ago, our founders designed the initiative process.  If enough voters sign petitions requesting an initiative be on a ballot, it will be, no matter what big business wants to control the government.  It sounds good in theory, in practice it has been a bit of a nightmare.  The latest example, since Amazon lost its lobbying campaign in the California legislature (there are several states where Amazon won and it is not subject to sales tax), it’s now heading to the people and gathering the signatures needed to put this issue to a vote.  All several hundred million of us are going to vote on whether or not Amazon should pay sales tax.

I’ll be curious for all of five minutes about how Amazon will sell its right to avoid sales tax.  Walmart, Target, and small businesses will be arguing that everyone should be paying their fair share of tax.  What’s guaranteed is that we will be bombarded with commercials about who creates the most jobs and every voter will be grateful for his or her DVR.

So, before the avalanche, here’s my opinion, Amazon must be required to pay taxes like every other business, large and small.  Don’t be snowed by their campaign, stand behind the small businesses in your community, the people who send their kids to your schools, who hire your neighbors, and who support your local government by paying taxes.  If Amazon wants to do business in California, then it should pay taxes just like everyone else.

The wall brings us together. The wall keeps us apart,
A granite demarcation of our lives and of our hearts.
It rises from the depths of dust and to the dust returns
A focus of reflection for those who come to yearn.

At this wall of pained remembrance, we together stand alone
Reflecting on the names of those etched deep within the stone
Reflecting on what we’ve become from what we left behind,
Memories etched in flesh and stone, forever intertwined.

Names set deep in granite are forever meant to last
Reflections change and fade away in journeys to the past,
Fleeting life and ageless death join at this sombre pall.
And once more we are brothers as we gather at the wall.