Hello and a happy new year to everyone. As the most feeble blogger on record, I feel it incumbent upon even me to check in once before the end of 2011 and to post some pictures of a few of the places I visited in 2010/2011, in all of which I met the most wonderful book sellers and book buyers and book readers and book writers. No one will be offended, I think, if I say that my favorite place was the isle of Capri. Do you remember in Blazing Saddles when Hedley Lamarr says to the the group of cigar smoking politicians, “We have to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentleman!”? Well, sometimes in Capri where I was honored to be a part of a lecture series called “Le Conversazione,” those words came to mind. So, thank you Anronio Monda and Davide Azzolini for dreaming up such a dreamy event. Above is the view from our window. And for those many, many months, years or decades or lifetimes when one cannot be on Capri, I highly recommend Extraordinary Women by Compton Mackenzie and South Wind by Norman Douglas. Below, left to right, a few more places: San Francisco from a Berkeley window; Tucson; Birthplace of Motown; the Watergate at dawn.
