Junk Shop Window: Essays on Myth, Life, and Literature

In the world of Junk Shop Window, nothing is quite what it seems. A visit to the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere, England, results in a meeting with a telepathic dog. A trip to see the Irish Rovers on St. Patrick’s Day becomes slapstick worthy of the I Love Lucy show. An attempt to record the right background sounds for a Sherlock Holmes radio play opens a doorway in time to the world of a century ago. And Hermes, the messenger god, appears in various guises, relaying sometimes cryptic, sometime life-saving messages.

In these pages, Patterson offers us a curiosity shop of the mind, in which everyday encounters yield unexpected gems. Seen through this author’s eyes, our contemporary world is full of portals into myth and history, leading to serious questions about the nature of time itself. Add a little alchemy, a dash of metaphysics, some scholarship, and some well-earned humor, and you’re inside Junk Shop Window, where every experience gleams with insight, and the world is at once more strange and more deeply beautiful than you ever knew.

Junk Shop Window is getting so much praise from reviewers and interviewers! Take a look at these:

A rave review by Pulizter-prize winning critic Michael Dirda in The Washington Post:
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Another rave by poet and scholar Charles Rammelkmap in The Hopkins Review:
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A delightful interview with the author by fiction writer Leslie Pietrzyk on her acclaimed blog, To Be Read:
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A probing, insightful interview with Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri on her award-winning radio show, The Poet and the Poem:
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And a heart-felt, lovely interview with poet and activist Ethelbert Miller on his weekly WPF literary show, On the Margin:
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Diane Gottlieb’s review of Junk Shop Window in Hippocampus Magazine sparkles with praise for Patterson’s craft
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Watch James J. Patterson & Aaron Hamburger Reading & Discussion