Around the Corner

by Paul Dry

In December Paul Dry Books had to move its offices to a building just around the corner from our old one. Our new office is clean and cheerful, more agreeable in every aspect. Driven by necessity, our move has been a success.

To me, the idea of "just around the corner" stands for what is physically or figuratively nearby but unknown or imprecisely appreciated. Because they fall outside of our customary experience, these people, books, ideas—as well as restaurants, schools, stores of all kinds—may remain under- or unappreciated. Yet learning more about them enlarges the ambit of our lives.

How does a person awaken to the value of things nearby but beyond everyday experience? We’ve thought about this at Paul Dry Books. Without necessity, two obvious obstacles stand in the way of enlarging the boundaries of experience: the limits on one’s time, and a tendency to protect oneself from overload.

Most of us have become expert at not attending to sales pitches. To cope sensibly with our profusion of choices, we need helpful advice. We may turn to experts and critics, or to advisors and friends. When looking for a good book, I think friends offer the best help. They invite us to follow them "around the corner" to try a new book that we may not have known about or taken notice of.

Paul Dry Books invites you around the corner. Neither exotic nor routine, our books will enlarge and enrich the map of your imagination. That might mean you’ll learn about transfinite numbers, or philosophical notions of passion, or the nature of literary fame. Or you can travel with our fictional heroine Alys de Renneville to faraway 14th-century Scotland where she hopes to ransom her father from captivity.

In our ninth year of publishing we offer some fifty titles. We’d like to be that friend who introduces you to something wonderful, perhaps overlooked, but near at hand, in the form of a handsome book.

Learn More About Paul Dry Books

• "Discovered or Invented -- Who Can Say?" by Paul Dry
• "Take Five Moments" by Paul Dry
• "People Reading" by Paul Dry
• "Ten Engagements" by Paul Dry
• A Leap Into Books (Harvard Magazine, 2001)
• Curious Dry Books (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2002)
• An Experience in 'Reading Better' (Holt Uncensored, 2000)
• "A Welcome Addition" by Robert Leiter