1. A Virtual Landscape - the foundation / ground being Books that concentrate on Art, History & Culture
2. 2. The Non-Book Items offered will help to inspire a sense of sharing and community building-toward greater understanding, mutual benefit .... rafts to float on fluid utility.
3. 3. The more Ethereal we drift; the need for Art, Poetry, and inner fulfillment manifests - and we continue on to Visual Aide; Poetry Aide and Pocket Aphorisms.

Another component of being a "book person"is the appreciation and enjoyment of the printed page as an Aesthetic ...that is apart from the purely informational interest. The Art of Reading can, and ideally should develop into an affinity for how the work is presented.

From a retail history in bookselling, Middle Earth Books gradually came into its own as a publishing enterprise of small press / mostly poetry in the 70's. When we relocated in California, this aspect grew fine press wings through the study and pursuit of Letterpress Printing at Cowell Press at the University of California, Santa Cruz through the 1980's.

As a parallel, the continued interest in retail bookselling in turn spawned Niche of Light which extended general bookselling into a specific interest in Sufism and other related 'mystical' disciplines. The printed page was touched by a more immediate calligraphic potential projecting into the future. The Niche of Light was conceived in 1994 and began in a root cellar in 1995, underneath an alley building with an owl on top. The still waters of Zamzam were disturbed through four shifts of place, until eventually becoming ethereal in the dawn light of cyberspace. The light will perhaps cycle but will remain constant as the sky... there being three things not remaining hidden for long: The sun; The Moon AND The Truth.