Mar. 16, 2012   by Marie Howe   I need to buy for the trip. Even
now I can hardly sit here  already screeching and banging.  The
mystics say you are as close as my own breath. Why do I flee
from you?  My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.  Help me. Even as I write
these words I am planning  "Prayer" by Marie Howe, from The
Kingdom of Ordinary Time. © W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.
Reprinted with permission. (buy now)  Nathaniel Hawthorne's The
Scarlet Letter was published on this date in 1850 (books by this
author). He didn't expect the book to sell well, although he did
feel that "some parts of the book are powerfully written." As it
happened, the book was an instant best-seller, selling 2,500
copies in 10 days. The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-
produced books in America, and it was likewise distributed
quickly, so more people were reading it at once and talking
about it. The word of mouth drove sales of the book, a
relatively new phenomenon at that